The Makar’s Choice: Jackie Kay picks a favourite verse to help us through lockdown

Scotland’s national poet Jackie Kay picks a favourite verse each week for a little inspiration to help us through lockdown.

I read this poem earlier this year when I judged the Out Of Bounds poetry project. It was written for the 12-13 age group and won joint third prize.

I love the way it captures the relationship between a granddaughter and grandfather, and how much of that relationship is fuelled by the imagination. I love the Proustian maturity in the last lines of the poem, the sense of time fading.

For grandparents up and down the country missing their grandchildren, this crisis has unleashed an anxiety about time fading, too – about old people losing so much precious time with their families.

In My Country by Ruby Guilfoyle

I remember the smiles and the endless laughter
The blurred feet of my baby cousin
Camouflaged in the jungle at our feet
The daisies that towered as we pretended
Playing around the flowerbeds
Like little pixies floating through the summer air.
I remember the age I spent in awe as my grandad
Built the foundations of my imagination
I can tell you the exact shade of bright red
The rustic scent of the painted wood
The slick feeling of the paint on my fingertips.
It took me anywhere and everywhere
I remember the ‘five more minutes’
As we flew through the air
Jumping higher and higher
Striving for the sky
Only to land again
In a circle of blue reality.
As childhood fades away
Left in Grandad’s garden.