Keeping Orchids - by
The orchids my mother gave me when we first met
/ are still alive, twelve days later. Although
/
/ some of the buds remain…
Curriculum Level: SQA National 5 texts
Gap Year - by
Gap Year
/ (for Mateo)
/
/ I
/ I remember your Moses basket before you were born.
/ I’d stare at the fleecy white sheet for days, weeks,
/ willing…
Lucozade - by
My mum is on a high bed next to sad chrysanthemums.
/ ‘Don’t bring flowers, they only wilt and die.’
/ I am scared…
My Grandmother’s Houses - by
1
/ She is on the second floor of a tenement.
/ From her front room window you see the cemetery.
/
/ Her bedroom is my…
Basking Shark - by
To stub an oar on a rock where none should be,
/ To have it rise with a slounge out of the…
Visiting Hour - by
The hospital smell
/ combs my nostrils
/ as they go bobbing along
/ green and yellow corridors.
/
/ What seems a corpse
/ is trundled into a lift and…
Assisi - by
The dwarf with his hands on backwards
/ sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
/ on tiny twisted legs from which
/ sawdust might run,
/ outside the…
Trio - by
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Winter (EM) - by
The year goes, the woods decay, and after,
many a summer dies. The swan
on Bingham’s pond, a ghost, comes and goes.
In the Snack-bar - by
A cup capsizes along the formica,
/ slithering with a dull clatter.
/ A few heads turn in the crowded evening snack-bar.
/ An old man…
Good Friday - by
Three o’clock. The bus lurches
/ round into the sun. ‘D’s this go –‘
/ he flops beside me – ‘right along Bath Street?
/ -…
Glasgow 5 March 1971 - by
With a ragged diamond
/ of shattered plate-glass
/ a young man and his girl
/ are falling backwards into a shop-window.
/ The young man’s face
/ is bristling…