A Pocket Full of Crumbs

‘It’s a terrible habit,’ Jan Sutch Pickard writes, ‘putting food into my pocket. This keeps happening: where the midpoint of an Iona Community pilgrimage is marked by welcome flapjack; at beach picnics with my family sharing sandy sandwiches. When I was an Ecumenical Observer, a peace monitor, on the West Bank, I was given flatbread from the taboon – the earth-oven – of my Muslim neighbours; in West Jerusalem, the Women in Black shared cookies at the end of a stressful demonstration; after church in Nablus, Palestinian Christians lingered over coffee: but I’m not good at eating and talking. The morsels go into my pocket – and later become food for the birds.’

 

This collection of poems can be compared to such crumbs – from many sources. Poems of strong and well-crafted connections – between communities in the West of Scotland and the West Bank Palestinian territories; between prayer and politics; between a lyrical delight in the natural world – and down-to-earth living, observed with warmth and humour. 

 

Jan Sutch Pickard is a former Warden of Iona Abbey, a storyteller, liturgist and Methodist lay preacher. She has twice served as a peace monitor with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.

  

Swallows at Crianlarich

The sleeper shuffles into Crianlarich 

on a grey morning, eyes not quite open yet. 

Stepping onto the platform, I feel air from the hills

splash like fresh water in my face

and am startled by a world full of wings: 

swallows swooping round the station, 

small bodies that jink and dart, 

over the down platform, past tearoom signs

and tubs of late-summer flowers, 

across lines stretching south to Glasgow, 

rails running north across Rannoch Moor – 

dancing as though delighted, 

maybe with the morning midge-rise, 

or simply with all that air

sending out urgent messages on twitter, 

low-flying, then looping over and up 

to gather on wires with fast-beating hearts:

a new brood testing their wings 

in training for the long haul 

where lines converge on the horizon, 

connecting with another hemisphere

and this in-between place where I’ve alighted,

paused for breath, is where the tired year

breathes out and blows them far away –

where the young swallows’ journey starts.

 

Book Sample

Weight	145 g
Author(s)	Pickard, Jan Sutch