I love their whimsy, how they abandon themselves to fun and are able to find it in almost all things. And how they have not the slightest fear of judgment or disdain.
In Tongue years ago, way up in the northernmost reaches of Scotland I popped in to a local shop. While browsing I spotted a wee lassie there with her father, dressed up in her lovely kilt, a matching tartan tam perched at an angle on her head.
She was curious about me – and watched me, as children will do – her eyes following me around the shop.
Standing alongside her I pointed to a tiny toy sheep displayed on the shelf, which was dressed comically in a full perfect tuxedo.
I asked her, quietly: “Now what would a sheep be doing dressed in a tux?”
She thought about it and then announced, seriously:
“Maybe he’s goin’ tae a weddin’.”
A sequence of my poems has been published in a hardcover book entitled The Music of Leaving Poems by Tricia McCallum