Happy is the Man - by
Happy is the man who knows that little is more than enough.
/ He is deaf to the hindrance of plenty.
/ He herds,…
Best Scottish Poems 2011
Imago - by
He thought of so many ways to make this
/ (veined wing, weightless thing),
/ walked in nothingness dreaming.
/
/ Gathered and tossed stars like coins…
Staying In - by
I watch the city shrug its clothes back on.
An appaloosa spatter gathers scent
that hits the brain the way it hits a lawn:
Pomegranate - by
The soldier boys know nothing / of the world but how to end it.
Bladerunner - by
Let’s do something you’ll never tell
/ your friends about, my convenient wife.
/ Read me theology until holiness runs
/ deeper than my sackcloth and…
Coalend Hill Farm 1962 - by
I don’t remember the Beanley orra-man,
/ his boots down the lonnen black as a wet day, his caravan
/ under a butchered elm’s…
September - by
Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold
for brass and copper. It is not so strange
to feel nostalgia for the present; already
this September evening is as old
as a photograph of itself.
The Place de L’Institut - by
i.m. Anne Redpath
/
/ When I pause (I always do) the place
/ is placid – no reason to pause – its blandness
/ a principle…
Castletown, Isle of Man - by
How strange the way old lovers move into the present,
/ tense, and catch you off guard; you tell me
/ when you were…
Tree Surgeons - by
They range amongst the upper limbs
/ like primates encumbered with care,
/
/ find parts of trees we’d recognise
/ as human gestures on the level,
/
/ pass…
Springs - by
Full March moon and gale-force easters, the pair of them
sucking and shoving the river
back into its closet in the hills – or trying to.
The Académie Française Considers a Word for ‘Dogging’ - by
Chiennage, a literal response, is cast aside,
/ its laziness the thin end of the wedge, reminder
/ that the Anglophones are twenty miles…