(i) She’s soft as a cot rag.In the palm of your hand she’s a comma, an apostrophe, pluckedfrom a passage written in wool. Tease her apartand she’s smoke plume, a child’s scribbled thundercloud.She’s a snag of sheep, the kind bred for centurieson the edge of the world. Her stink on your fingers lastslong after you’ve […]
I bring you jays and woodpeckers.Instead of Mother’s Pride white sand and turquoise bars, here arelavender, wild thyme and leggy sage. In place of Columba’s Bay:this shrivelled stream, that sunken river. I bring you bitten fingernailsand scabs across my knuckles where a rock got in the way.Also weeding, homework, soap suds, dead mice, chicken shit,a […]
Harder
to find in the soundscape is our man,
the bell of his horn sanctifying the notes
in remembrance, or joy that the damned
thing is over
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
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It may seem a schoolboy’s whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth?
becoming still still becoming
pausing here to read this reading this to pause here
slow down long enough to read these words
