(For Martyn Bennett 1971-2005)
I saw your mother yesterday,
at Celtic Connections.
Dried eyed and coping.
She graced the stage
with Sheila Stewart – that voice.
That exotic fruit you fed me.
You did this.
Re-rooted a nation
with funky cèilidhean,
cool fèisean.
Returned hee-durrum-haw-durrum
to ceòl mòr.
Who but you would dare
liberate Michael Marra to harl a psalm
or soundscape Sorley Maclean.
The radical route you trod
on eroded drove roads, laid
tracks for our exiled youth
to follow you into their past.
Into muscular modernity.
But you dusted the archive of ancients
not wanting
to join them so soon.
The grit in your eye
as you stood by the trig stone
defied your urgent future.
One score years and some
was never enough.
It was all we were offered.
Now that waste is forgiven.
Tradition links arms
with beat box and decks.
This fèis is your echo.
When the footstompin dies,
and the piobaireachd stands alone,
we will pluck sad stones
from our breasts and
place them on your cairn.
Published in Poetry Scotland