Our winter work on the animal sanctuary, expressed in a modern spirit of the Carmina Gadelica*
Birther
May we be midwives to your purpose
as we prepare the food stations,
break the ice on white filigree-etched water troughs,
carry pails of water across hog wallows
criss-crossed with vegetation
and frost-hardened into mud like chocolate coconut ice.
Our sheep dogs supervise.
Saviour
May we work for you, as co-redeemers, wresting happiness out of pain
so that we may all have a chance to live and hope again.
May our pigs snuffle endearments into the warm straw
as they lie top to tail, nose upturned at their ark door,
may our hens enjoy clearing the polytunnel of greens
and ‘passing the harp’ noisily through long winter sleeps,
may our sheep enjoy hay as the wind blows hard,
their three-generation families safe on Noah’s Arks.
Spirit
You have blown us here, across the Border
may we breathe your creative energy
like a prayer wheel, scattering a gratuitous generosity of blessings,
warming all sentient beings across these fields, this community, this land.
Originally appeared in Borderlands: an Anthology (Borders Writers Forum: 2021)
* The Carmina Gadelica is a collection of prayers by 19th century and early 20th century Scottish highlanders and islanders, orally collected and written down by Alexander Carmichael. Many of these prayers detail their daily work, asking for God’s protection and blessing on it. Many are in Trinitarian form.
After a career teaching Religious Studies in both mainstream and special schools, Barbara Usher finds inspiration putting animal theology into practice on her animal sanctuary, initially in the Borders, now on eight acres in Fife. Her poetry has been published in Amethyst Review, Borderlands: an Anthology, the Catholic Poetry Room, Dreich, Last Leaves, Last Stanza (Editor’s Choice October 2025), Liennekjournal, and in the anthology Thin Places, Sacred Spaces (ed. Sarah Law). Her work appeared on the Resilience soundscape 2022 for Live Borders, with background accompaniment of her (late) pigs. She has contributed to the Sonic Library, Heids and Herts in Fife, and is the representative for the Fife Stanza affiliated with the Poetry Society.