I am dark and smooth, polished by many hands, but the one hand that I loved has gone, so let me swing to the rudder’s motion, moored in the lee, alone. I knew the change of weather by his grip and felt his hunter’s passion like a tide, and the herring scales he rubbed on […]
O wad this braw hie-heapit toun Sail aff like an enchanted ship, Drift owre the warld’s seas up and doun, And kiss wi’ Venice lip to lip, Or anchor into Naples’ Bay A misty island far astray Or set her rock to Athens’ wa’, Pillar to pillar, stane to stane, The cruikit spell o’ her […]
Girl of the red-gold hair, far from you, o love, my aim; girl of the red-gold hair, far from you my sorrow. Tonight on the Sound of Raasay my hand is on the helm, listlessly the wind shakes the sail, my heart is dumb, aching for your music, today and tomorrow indifferent to my expectation. […]
Something near to true
night-darkness. The children
are playing the Plinky-Boat –
a xylophone made
from a reclaimed yoal
/ I marched along the cliff
/ looking for insights to clear my thick head
/ and saw a submarine surfacing down in the Firth
/
/ rising
/ shaking…
Oor boat is rigged tae face the greater sea,
/ The day daws blithely whan we must set sail.
/ Hou aften hae we…
My hull is leaking like a sieve,
/ The paint is flaking off my hatches,
/ My heart’s not worn upon my sleeve
/ (But on…
Who can gauge our range or pace? Every woman, / a signal tower, an illusion, a ship bearing dead ahead.
Doo minds dee, whan da wind stöd wast,
/ I’d lay twa linns, and rin dee doon,
/ An tak a stane, an step…
Week after week I watched the darlings growing
/ Like two strange children in an orphan home,
/ Aft from the thrust block to…
Five thousand years between us, and yet / not a moment, it seems…
I am the Esperance, I sail in your wake, / canvas unfurled, bellied with hope / as you pour into…
