Dennis Johnstone
Sweat, toil, and crofting — poetry with muck on its boots.
This blog has never been one thing for long.
It began in the 1990s as a mix of poems, recipes, and links to people and ideas that caught my attention. It changed shape when my family moved to a Scottish croft in the early 2000s, and again after I developed Long Covid in 2020.
Now it’s part logbook, part witness statement — poetry, prose, and field notes on crofting, labour, illness, and survival.
Musings from a Stonehead is where I write down what I notice before it slips away.
I work as a healthcare support worker on a medical ward in Aberdeen and run a small croft in the hills. Most days are spent helping others regain what illness has taken, then returning home to mend fences, feed stock, or recover enough to face the next shift.
I’ve studied psychology theories — motivation, resilience, wellbeing, enablement — but most of what matters comes from watching who endures, and how. Philosophy and psychology are useful until the floor needs mopping. The rest is practice.
Sometimes poetry says what the rest can’t.
So I’ll end this section with a poem that comes closest to where I write from.
Where I’m From
I am from where the dust never settles nor stays,
Where the sun burns the soil in a shimmering haze,
Where the locusts descend in a ravenous tide,
And the floods follow drought with no mercy or guide.
I am from miners who never struck gold in the seams,
From the prophets and zealots who preached bloody dreams,
From the drovers and killers, the lost and the found,
The soldiers, the sailors, the sun-beaten ground.
I am from whispers of treason, from old comrades’ sighs,
From the ones who bought answers in government lies,
From the axe in the moonlight, the belt in the hand,
From the bones that were broken, failed to withstand.
I am from rebels who swore at the Crown in the night,
From the guards on the coaches who stood for a fight,
From the duffers who vanished with sheep in the mist,
And the maids in the parlours, unseen and dismissed.
I am from rifles that spoke when the hunger ran deep,
From the nurses who bandaged the wounds we must keep,
From the jockeys, the racers, the gamblers who fell,
From the priests who sought heaven and found it in hell.
I am from hands that held fiddles and reins in their grip,
From the drivers who cursed those who paid no tip.
From the mountains where the snow wrapped the world up in white,
To the jungles that swallowed both shadow and light.
I am from paths that stretch further than reason can see,
From the hands worn to leather by toil and machete,
From the red dust that clings like the ghosts of the past,
From the swarm and the storm, from the first to the last.
Dennis Johnstone
Stonehead Croft — poetry with muck on its boots.
© 1993–Present, Dennis Johnstone. All rights reserved. Some things fade; copyright doesn’t.