100/100 For dragon eggs?

Shall we open the door?  What story, the old or the new?

We have lived so long and so well

In our green fable

Shall we open the doors? 

[from ‘Uranium 2’, George Mackay Brown, ‘Travellers’]

99/100 The Westray monks

Sixteen walkers about the church,

Heads bare as stone,

Long striders, deep-voiced, rough-handed.

‘Brother wind, gentle sister raindrops’ –

That’s what they call this black whirl of storm.

They haven’t a sword between them.

Here they come, in procession

Demure and harmless as girls

[v.3, Twelfth-Century Norse Lyrics of Rognvald Kolson, Bard and Saint, George Mackay Brown, from Selected Poems 1954-1992]

98/100 Returning from Quoyloo brewery

‘Oh, she’ll be back.   That dear one

Is gold of our corn

She’s Orkney rain and spindrift ...’

[from ‘Gossip in Hamnavoe:  about a girl’, George Mackay Brown, ‘Travellers’]

No extra creativity about this one - just a September 1st shower over Hoy.

97/100 Drop my harp

I have said to Erling Saltfingers, Drop my harp

Through a green wave, off Yesnaby.

Next time you row to the lobsters. 

[from The Five Voyages of Arnor, George Mackay Brown, 'Selected poems 1952-1992']

96/100 Hill Runes

The horsemen are red in the stable

With whisky and wrath.

The petrol drinker is in the hills.

[from Hill Runes, George Mackay Brown, 'Selected poems 1952-1992']

95/100 A summer midnight

Orkney turns upon poles of light and darkness

A summer midnight, the north

Is red with the two lamps of dawn and sunset.

[The Northern Sky, from ‘Haiku for the Holy Places, George Mackay Brown, ‘Travellers’]