
Image by Martin Gollan
By Owen Gallagher
Who’d have thought a cozy of knitters of lambswool scarves
and skirts, whose works of art were packed
and dispatched to Barbour and Harrods,
whose looping voices held them tight as a skein of wool
over clacking needles, would have their plea
for a minimum wage dropped like a careless stitch
by their boss, when he met them in Morag’s front room?
Who’d have thought as he turned, they’d plunge
knitting needles into the crotch of the effigy
of him, then utter a highland curse
that made him scream and use such foul language
that raised the heads of other knitters
up and down the glen, last heard
when the clans rushed to meet the Redcoats head-on.