Exercising Ghosts

 

I.

The city skyline spiked by spires

The silence ripped by siren choirs

Riding the Marches,walking the Mat

Walking forward , walking back

 

II.

Exercising  ghosts , the hidden city,

Forgotten sites where Byron walked,

Rabbie Burns supped reaming swats,

Boswell and Johnson took Holy Communion,

Seumas Mor heard Jeannie Robertson

singing  folk songs in Causewayend

 

III.

Exercising ghosts , through these streets

Heroin hoodies with ‘heroin gait’,

The changing face of Langstane Place ,

Half built buildings loom in space.

Grass grows out of the Uptown Baths

the smell of chlorine long gone now

 

 

IV.

Uber-awake in a changing city,

Baristas punt their caffeine fixes

Windmill Brae , a hill of nightclubs

road to the Green, a hill of violence.

 

V.

In the gardens, the crows await their fate,

dark guardians of the Corby Haugh,

Kelly’s cats stand smart with bow ties,

waiting in line for possible change.

 

 

VI.

Exercising ghosts , down through the Green

Walking the paths of folk  from the past.

Up  ‘Vicus Fraxini’ , the ash tree’s way,

The earliest street in young Aberdeen.

 

VII.

Round the Mither Kirk, as facts fade in time

and bones are scattered in underground graves.

Above our city , the sky continues, as always,

grey and cloudy.

 

 

(This one is from my 2011 chapbook' Back Wynd of the Mind, a walking historical tour around the Granite City , where I live. )