The Morrow-bird - by
Stones, it won’t be sufficient
just to sit on your dowps and say ‘nay’.
Trees, don’t be waving your arms about
in some new breeze every day.
Stones, it won’t be sufficient
just to sit on your dowps and say ‘nay’.
Trees, don’t be waving your arms about
in some new breeze every day.
Let her new river shine on a day
That is fresh and glittering and contemporary;
Let it be true to itself and to its origins
Inventive, original, philosophical
And if or when the people’s surge subsides
/ to tourist trickles from this present spate,
/ do not relax or quietly desiccate,
/ do not…
for the new Scottish Parliament
/
/ The icy rain is spitting
/ on the pines and golden birches.
/ Hangings of black cloud
/ are torn apart by…
Open the doors! Light of the day, shine in; light of the mind, shine out!
/ We have a building which is…
I.
/
/ On our immigrant Canadian street
/ we heard at least twenty words for frozen,
/ spoken by snow-blonde children named for Icelandic volcanoes,
/ Ukrainian saints…
February, and the rising light leaves nothing illegible.
/ Meall Fuar Mhonaidh, snow-fisted, risks its name,
/ a lump of rock, rounded; a muscled…
The sound of horses’ hooves in market square
/ recalls the riding out to mark the bounds,
/ the summer rites and battles fought…
1. SPL, Summer 1999
/
/ A photograph taken upstairs in the Library
/ of one of your ‘kinetic poems’,
/ the upright rotating bluegreen barber’s pole…
Pu awa the endill scheit o winter.
/ Yank it aff fae the pikes an runkled scruif
/ for the canny moment. Fae…
The bricht rays o the Winter Solstice daws,
/ Streakin oot owre the Mauchline Basin Plain,
/ Lichtin oan a slumberin colossus,
/ The…
The earth as holy ground
/
/ The dancer holds her breath
/ homo-would-be-wise walks the earth
/ boots up and strides the earth
/ which now lies…