A longing for clean bones
Here digs a child with intrigue and a trowel. What remains of the hamster, buried between the spruce? It is a grey day. Noon dusk under the weave and scratch of trees. The child scrapes soil. Each nail ends in a crescent of dirt. A small white skeleton fills his mind as he digs. You can see it too. It’s not like anything really changes. You hope for clean bones, odourless as those in glass cabinets, like a symbol of something gone, a sign of something having left. No one wants the in-between – a smudge of rot and fur and stink. Who can blame the child for running from the woods, desperate for the lights of home. Causeway/Cabhsair, 2015 |
In the blackhouse
We have shared a door with her, sung to her as she chewed the cud, felt her tongue and warm breath. Now her udders have hardened. This is her last meal, sad moon eyes over the bucket rim. We turn away as the sledgehammer is raised. And drops. And she drops with her skull split. This is the way of things here. We have milked her dry. She’ll see us through winter, no bite taken for granted. A sip of peatreak to help the first of her down. Causeway/Cabhsair, 2015 |
Part of something bigger It’s just me on a scooter, humming the road home. Miles into my future a bee is working the heather, weaving the blooms, oblivious to my twist of the throttle, my easing into the corners of a road meandering as a bumble flight. Every micro-shift of speed, every shiver of improbable wings brings us to a final meeting, the thwack of his small body on the shell of my helmet leaving only me alive to wonder if it’s all just chance. Poetry Scotland, 2015 |
Talking about Scottish independence
with a neighbour (For Ronnie) There is a wall between us. Its cracks and caverns are black with ants. He sees his raised flag as a symbol of unity and pride. I see the stripped flap of any flag as a sign of division the colour of illusion. It shows allegiance to Queen and country he says. I have no queen I answer. Now he’s waving a finger, leaning across the no-mans-land of the wall top. He’s forgotten about the ants, calls them little bastards as they bite and I grin. Tomorrow I will dust it with ant killer so we can join again in the tangle of our differences and share a dram across the wall as it crumbles between us. Poetry Scotland, 2015 |