Rain - by
I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face…
Best Scottish Poems 2009
Granite City Eclogue - by
Shines like frost quartz hard is worked with difficulty.
/ Perdurable. A source of…
from Aberdeen University 1945-9 - by
I
/
/ The glitter of water and the wake…
/ Heading for University in Aberdeen.
/ It’s an autumn morning. I am seventeen.
/ Above the Isle of…
Ties - by
In wardrobes, ties hang like curing fish, patterns like smoke. (In restaurants, avoid kippers and sauce.)
/ ‘She said she wasn’t ready…
Spanish Shaving - by
As light dims, I take my shaver outside
/ to trim my holiday beard. The grey drifts
/ down to tinder-dry grasses; the small…
Lochinver - by
Lochinver. The end of the track.
/ Black swallows black
/ and the storm howls like a dog.
/ At the quay, in orange fog,
/ a ship…
from the saga of fnc gull - by
VII
/
/ In which fnc gull makes his will and says his last goodbyes
/
/ weve been here afore big lad
/ mind a year or…
Aiberdeen Street - by
I
/
/ Ye were hyne awa fae Nuremberg o the flags,
/ the death-crap o the purges; Il Duce’s
/ black-sarked legions heistin eagles…
/ Woolie’s guns and…
Hawthorn Queen - by
It was one of those last swarms,
/ a blood-red immolation of ladybirds
/ so thick
/ the air appeared pixellated.
/
/ Traffic stopped.
/
/ My mother grasped my hand,…
Bonspiel - by
He saw the weather written on the pane
/ as he buckled on his gaiters,
/ shouldering the hammer to walk the lane
/ spooked with…
June the Second - by
it is dawn and my wife is coming to bed
/ and she has been watching a film about the life of…
Setting the Time Aside - by
“the sea is not salt enough”
/
/ 1
/
/ Gently, gently gets
/ things going, as you
/ well know, and here’s
/ the nub: the dust is up
/ afresh, and…