One of the wonderful things about the Scots language is its tendency to travel all over the world and the UK. Someone who has learnt to speak and write it well does not lose it in foreign parts.  

Rowena Love, currently living with her faimly in Hertfordshire, is no stranger to Scots poetry fans. Her poems have been published in many journals and she has won some  of the prestigious competitions that encourage our poets. She is still writing new poems in her strong Scots learnt in Ayrshire and from her relatives in the North East and Orkney. This one, of a woman making up at a mirror while thinking of someone else who has been close to her, is a beautiful piece of work, that should encourage all writers and readers of poetry in Scots.

Pentit Leddy by Rowena M. Love

It's time. 
Ye're sae hantle in ma thochts
that it’s a stamagast tae see ma physog
no yourn in the keekin-gless.
Fingers flaucht a wing o hair ahint ae lug: 
new style fur a new stairt.

Ah gove intae the gless,
stieve as a preened butterflee,
ma een marled wi rigglemerie o howp.

Zip rips the seelence. Makeup brattles oot.
Eelids wait thir stour o pollen
in colours fragrant wi mynd.
Gray, licht as the Tay skinklin wi sunblink,
or stormclood daurk, when we laucht in the rain;
a blush o day-set, its lammer spraing
cruivin me in the past when Ah was still cocooned
in innocence, wappit fast in yir silken lees.

Haird deceesions reeve the Tammie-nid-nod,
lattin poustie flichter free.
Mascara curls breers intae a Venus fleetrap 
tae fang yir tent, keep it. Lippie kisses flesh
lik a premoneetion or a hecht.

Thare.  Ah'm duin.  The leddy, pentit.
It's time.