Poems of Scotland, Exile, and Everything Else
A variant miscellany, home and abroad
- 910 reads
Balmerino Abbey Day
Around the river, walking the water lanes from where the car was left (better to tread lightly down to the remains of the monastery). All that...
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- 1051 reads
Dalriada
Outcrop of skull on the thin headland, the seas pulsed with song, communication that was a scar, overstretched. Rough hide of the coracle containing...
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- 625 reads
Intentionally Blank
This page is intentionally blank, snowfield before the fact of the scrawl spoiling the white barren flatness. No wishes are listed here, nor...
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- 1187 reads
Joe Goes (A Scottish Scat Reminiscence)
Jumping Joe Jehosophat, full throttle in the Railway Tav (nineteen ninety three). Go in there for ten years, six hours a day, you’d see him squat,...
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- 457 reads
Moving
Moving house. Nod to the skeletons in the shrubbery (only buried guinea pigs holding long gone paws). This relocation coincides, more or less, with a...
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- 1555 reads
On Having Been Found
It was open season on me, thank God, plucked from the non-purple patch where I had been lurking (in plain sight). How wonderful to be uplifted from...
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- 612 reads
Over Frae Angus
Over frae Angus and intae the Mearns, check in the howe whar the gulls sing like bairns. Over the Tay and on into Fife, the haunts o the hunted, the...
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- 613 reads
Over The Shoulder
Struggle with the beast, but don’t believe you’ll win. In this swirling phase that carries down dregs to a drowning pool, tooth and claw cannot...
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- 554 reads
Ridge
Along this elevation muscles turn to water and thoughts refuse to muster. This escarpment is where magnetic rock makes compases fail the north. One...
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- 545 reads
Single track Heaven
Going north in single track heaven, a black line through the Highland Line, was what we did each summer. Dad banged the horn to blow away the crows...
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- 1411 reads
The Furnace Room
In the furnace room of her heart, I expected the tintinabulation of chimes climbing to an airy tower. Instead there was a manic anvil hammered...
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- 1414 reads
The Last Day I Loved You
Put the papers away and black bags out, like any other Tuesday. Rose late and adjusted my gait downstairs to the fact there was no shadow near and no...
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- 1035 reads
Walking Backward Out of the Sea
While you were walking backwards from the sea, I had reached the estuary. When you unwound the seaweed ropes and returned to all your mortal hopes, I...
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- 515 reads
The Paper Trails (For JC)
I imagine you, still, somewhere, mind deep in newsprint. A whole day we sometimes sat, you and I, reading the latest from the dailies, swapping...
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- 978 reads
Bring A Brick To Work
Bring a brick to work today, bring a blueprint, bring a prayer. Bring some peas in – but never marrowfat, no fear. Bring a tunnel and a blimp; bring...
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- 1984 reads
General Tom Thumb Visits the Dundee Lunatic Asylum
Those with diminished senses look at the man with restricted height, standing there in full Highland garb. He did the latest skit from his sell out...
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- 620 reads
The Unwritten Notebook
The open pages are an invite to write, or are they? Some hesitate, beware the bear trap book. Blank pages may bring terror to the unwary, like the...
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- 600 reads
Moonrouse
Toffee penny moon stuck in the low branches of the birch between sagging buildings here. Dog fox barks down the dark in its den under the arched elm...
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- 365 reads
Ice On The Inside
This is no false memory or nostalgia for harder times. I remind you of white days, water in the veins of the town, crystallised. More than summer's...
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- 1265 reads
His Twilight
He used to sit and rail at the evening sun when it would beam between the buildings brilliantly after a day of flood. He would curse the disgraceful...
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- 336 reads
Old Owl
Old owl am I, sat in the steeple, roosted in the belfry, oblivious to the bells that pull and hope to rouse me from decades of deafness. I leave the...
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- 1312 reads
Raptor
I have the talent to undo you. Should I rest upon your servant wrist, you could not resist my power there, unable to undo or endure the barbed wire...
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- 2419 reads
Dusk Words
Gloaming is knowing the dust of words and worlds, transition time, the hourglass hour, quicksand skies, sighing slipway into the lordly, proper dark...
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- 373 reads
Moving
He moved house in his ninetieth year all by himself. Not because the flat he had was unsuitable, nor that he couldn’t manage the stairs. There was...
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- 931 reads
Three Women at the Estuary
The first one flew away before we had time to say barely hello. The geese honked derision at the fumbled fond words I hoped to snare her with . The...
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- 1670 reads
Bonnie Prince Charlie On The Moon
Thistles sprout in an airless place, claymores rattle clash without purpose and gaunt ghosts battle soundlessly over a place bleaker than a Scottish...
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- 341 reads
Scottish Lang Syne Prayer
May the great Lord of mock chops watch over our last repast. Let the wipe clean plastic cloth be sinless over the formica tartan alter and be blessed...
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- 567 reads
Primary Children at the Heritage Centre
Their footsteps recede and Queen Elizabeth the first relaxes again in her fussy portrait ruffs. Miners in sepia prints blown up to twenty feet on the...
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- 737 reads
Coda for the Piper, 1746
They hung him at York in November, seven months after Culloden, Jamie who had cheered his regiment out of Angus with his pipes. No muffled coronach...
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- 450 reads
Gentrified
In the early days when they facelifted the city, I drove back north into the maze they made of it, driving through places I never knew, expecting...
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- 699 reads
Lit Windows
Walking through the town in early darkness when nothing is yet asleep, the geometry of shadows takes sway, twilight measures are in place over...
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- 750 reads
Clothes for Friendless Men
These are the clothes for friendless men, creased as their faces but beyond their grief, these relics not venerated but on display and sale, in all...
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- 1187 reads
Weary All Hill
From our hotel window we watch legends cloud form on the broad flank of the hull. A sunset sided flock slowly mow contours and then move in unison,...
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- 640 reads
Bawbees
Beneath the black soil (in your dream attic), the unspent coins asleep lament their unspent wealth, hoarded by a corrupt cleric and buried in his...
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- 327 reads
These Are The Signs
These are the signs of the cross. A half empied bottle of screw top wine in the bus shelter by the blighted terminus, child's new shoes wildly...
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- 291 reads
Folklore
It was not witchcraft or the demon loaded night that kept the boy awake, in a good way. It was being afloat under the thought and sight of diamond...
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- 255 reads
The Burgh
Like some other Scottish places, this town abides, if not dilapidated, then resting like a lean to on its past. The sadness is in shadows that never...
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- 775 reads