Oh Rabbie Burns you might have goneto the sugar-land of plentyand who’s to say you’d not have beena strutting man so kentymaking a bonny living thereupon the backs of slaves who stoopedand struggled with the weightthat bought them early graves?The beauty of the red, red rosemust wither in the heatthe sweetness of the laverock’s tunemust […]
Dae some feals still believe the Earth is flat?
Kin ye imagine haein the chikk
tae caa iss solar system ‘oors’?
As if sharin atoms wae it gies us first dibs?
In Wedderburn’s rare monolog
the scheiphirde telt us hou
aa stars stud but an ainly sphere –
it isnae like that nou.
Watch a nieve-fu o thon broon irth
rin throu yer fingers, like Time itsel.
Aftimes slaw, aftimes gleg,
bit aye rinnin oot.
Stardust:
Scattered crumbs
Coalescing
On the burnt,
Vantablack, baking tray
O the universe
Scientists will call the end
of Cassini a migration.
Mission complete,
they’ll clink cups
& plot another probe.
Still, masel, (His buik that thoosans o miles
Up in the lift has furled)
The keeper o Burns’s poems
Hae bin truly ooto this warld
Here I am, as hellish as you’d imagine:
with my mountains and frozen plains
and my cloak of methane, nitrogen and CO2.
I’m as poisonous as a summer day in Ness.
Your light won’t come close to me; I’ve at least one foot
in eternal darkness.
Ilka dug maun
hae its dey, and thur’s naewhaur
ither can cry ye
All those hidey-holes and secrets,
twinkling and glittering
like aurora’s lanterns
beneath chitterin’ rock.
o ma een as you bend doon
tae blaw a steamin gust
at the dandillie pluff –
it dunces itsel impty,
Then thair they are! Siccar as the mornin Sun!
Flashin, gliskin, glentin sparks o fire!
The Perseids, wingin their endless wey,
Athort the braid black welkin o the nicht.
