Upon that night, when fairies lightOn Cassilis Downans dance,Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,On sprightly coursers prance;Or for Colean the route is ta’en,Beneath the moon’s pale beams;There, up the Cove, to stray an’ rove,Among the rocks and streamsTo sport that night; Amang the bonie winding banks,Where Doon rins, wimplin, clear,Where Bruce ance rul’d the […]
Up a path that’s barely there, jostled / by heather, holly, low-flying oak, / the child I was, shy and furious, is trying / to fight her way out.
I am knocked for six as a pair / of collared doves crash-land with a flurry / and wreak havoc like two busty floozies
These are the shortened daysand the endless nights. Carol Ann Duffy, from Mean Time (1993) Gloomy December.The doldrum days of the dead of winter.These are the shortest daysand the endless nights.So wish for the moonand long for the light. Chill winds. Relentless rain.Dark to go to work in, darkness home again.But, given just one fine […]
When is a wood not a wood. She points out the cold
pillboxes left behind by WW2.
You will not need kindling.
I think I’ll go up quick
as summer timber, my anger
big and dry as a plantation
that dreams of being paper:
Awful, just terrible, isn’t it dreadful, the feeling I get when I think about
you.
mirror images, mirror people how can I escape them,
my own reflection in the water of time?
the cyclops who survives on unspoken thoughts?
For the times aheadwhen we will be as if at either endof the long bench where distance keptis love’s measure and death dancesthe space between when words aloneare not enough and queued memories reach out to touch let longing be a storeof nut and seed that grows each day in strange hibernation readying for its […]
Air a ghlùinean sa ghàrradh
a’ cruinneachadh ùir
mar ùrnaigh na làmhan,
A Cheòlraidh chreagach, ghuaineach
Triallaidh mi bho bhàrr do ghuailne,
Mar fhaoilinn na linne sgaoilte
Beiridh mi air fead na gaoithe.
I imitated pitch perfectly, declined with
authority and wondered why people only
stared.
