Betty McKellar has lived in Lochwinnoch for over 50 years, as a sheep farmer’s wife and local teacher. She is a well known and now elderly local poet. It’s an area where Scots is well respected and all her work in is Scots.   A long term member of Johnstone Writers Group and Lochwinnoch writers  group, many of her poems are inspired by the countryside around Lochwinnoch.

We haven’t had much of spring this year – straight from the long cold winter to hot summer, so here is a poem full of April to make up for it. It’s a poem that has characteristics making it easily memorable: strong sound, good rhythm, some repetition. A great wee poem.

Yallow by Betty McKellar

Yallow’s a licht that braks through a smirrin o grey.
It’s a sunray
dancing wi green.
It’s primroses spilt ower the heid o a bank
in a tummlin glut
clottit
like poured oot cream.
Yallow’s  the fuzz on the back o a bumbee
bumlin in flooer rosettes,
it’s a yorlin burd up amang poothery hazel catkins
singin its best.
It’s daffodil ladies blawin their trumpets unner a tree.
It’s a kiss frae the air
a smirkle in Averlie’s ee.