SCOTLAND'S Makar Jackie Kay has said a "huge big thank you" to frontline workers in a brand new poem dedicated to medics, supermarket staff and more.
Titled Essential, it hails the chemists, volunteers, carers, delivery workers, and food supply chain workers.
Kay's work has already touched lives across the country through poems including Welcome Wee One, which has been given to all new parents as part of the national baby box scheme.
A video of her reading the new poem has been broadcast on Scottish Government social media channels today.
Scotland’s Makar @JackieKayPoet has written a new poem as a “huge, big, thank you” to essential workers during the #coronavirus outbreak. #WeThankYou
— Scottish Government (@scotgov) April 16, 2020
Watch ‘Essential’ here ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/MMkBbkCIOs
In it, she recites:
ESSENTIAL
Up, doon, the length of our land -
Aberfeldy, Ardnamurchan -
There’s uplift, sharing; pass the baton!
A frontline forming, hand to fierce hand.
Shopfront workers, doon the aisle;
New-era queues metres apart.
The chemist’s prescription warms the heart.
Delivery folk vanish, ghost a smile.
Volunteers at the local food bank…
Shy half-moon in a clear Scots’ sky.
We leave with tins, groceries, goodbyes…
Clap in the gloaming when we say our Thanks.
And the sky greets with stars
And the bold birds sing
As we clink in our links in the Kindness line;
Holding absent hands for Auld Lang Syne.
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