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A big batch of new poems posted on the 1st of August, because I've had a huge backlog
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I ask poets who have recently had work published here to wait 3 months or so
before sending me new poems. It makes it fairer for everyone else. Many thanks.
Colin
Last updated: August 24, 2008
Wordsworth in 2006
Away from the public path
he turned his usual steps
and hitched a ride with me.
We spoke of metal machines
and plastic things that
etched his stony brow.
We sailed in silence, sweet
past mountains, streams and rocks
shaped like a scream.
Crows bickered overhead
as the road stretched out
Wordsworth looked out the window.
Puzzled.
Copyright © Dave Lewis 2008
New ways cut into the land.
Dark-faced rocks,
Veiled in protective net,
Call to mind my grandmother.
Like them, she was
Strong and resistant
Beyond all reason.
Like them also
Much was hidden deep
That was unprofitable to reveal,
And like them
She claimed to come from Scotland
But really came from another place
Much, much hotter.
Copyright © Simon Weller, 2008
On Arthur’s Seat
Our guide
as humble and modest
as the plants that thrive
on the slopes of Arthur’s Seat
told us
the names
the tastes
the properties
the history.
Like my fellow walker
‘minding the names each summer
forgetting them all each winter’
my slippy brain
couldn’t root
the information
and felt like
the dead cutting
we found on the mound
of human ashes.
Still,
my eyes enjoy
the shapes
the shades
the smells
the touch.
My heart soars
at their profusion.
Copyright © Irene Brown 2008
[Note: This poem was written after a lovely walk on Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh
on 2 nd August 2008, led by Gerry Loose and Takaya Fujii]
First Born
you land
behind her legs
a grey ghost of a foal
wrapped in
slimy cellophane
pink streaked
landing tackle
strung above you
contacting you still
to the emerging finality
raw liver
in more grey plastic
bloodier, too
to nuzzle she bites the wrapper
clears the membranes
lets your ears emerge
damp dark distinct
and calm
Copyright © Claire Seaman 2008
All The Family Secrets
All the family secrets
Are laid bare
Like some vast patchwork
Of sin and suffering,
That just can't suffer anymore -
The patches don't fit,
And one reluctant seamstress,
Born into this,
Finally pulls the thread
Loose, and it all comes to
Fall, settling unfurled
In my lap, her daughter.
Nothing is sacred anymore.
Copyright © Nadia Tariq 2008
Nadia is from South Lanarkshire
Balintraid
Going back, back to the hearth,
to the sense of that place
beneath the walls and roof,
and the cold damp smell
of the bedroom and the paneled door,
remembering the breath of the wind
combing through the trees in the lane,
carrying the sound of the smelter tannoy
through the cold night,
oh take me there now and let me sleep,
for here, here I am, here
and let there be nothing else.
Copyright © Frank Gillougley 2008
OFF AT A TANGENT
1 THE GLEN
I’ve put boots on for walking now, into the Glen
well prepared for a downpour and us losing our way.
How wet we were last time, how pervasive the scent
of wild garlic. This was a tree-scape of water, a sky
washed clean of its light. Remember how creepy it was
down by the Powder Mills there? The river as red
as blood of an ox, the earth mud-rubbled in stone and old leaves.
There were wings in high branches but no sign of a bird.
Here are all elements: a sense of redeeming an imprint of fire
when the gunpowder blew in an untimely hour. Stories are chiselled
in rock in the local kirkyard. Silver-thin birches seem fragile
in this open space; peeling bark flickers, curls up to a wisp.
There are offerings too by this wild river bed: a chunk of green clay
a tiny blue tile and a small grey marble that somebody lost in a game.
2 THE CHAPEL
Each bird has its moment of starting, its measure
marked out on a new scale of dawn. With colours of sunbreak
declaiming the morning they sing out a welcome to guests.
This is a chapel exploding with secrets, designed on a ley
for a host of green men who mimic each season and mood.
Here is a welter of falcons and serpents, gargoyles
sweet corn and maize. In alcoves and corners, deep in the gloom,
there’s a forest of faces and an archangel hung in horrendous
inversion, cast out of heaven for conniving with men.
Here are the fables of murder and envy carved into pillars
like the tale of a Master who was hanged for his crime.
Confronted by stone can we harvest its wisdom?
The gaze of a statue offers an answer, says
we are involved in every last notch, responsible even for angels.
3 THE KIRKYARD
So here in roses and detritus the Laird of Hawthornden
was laid to rest. Lasswade Kirkyard, noble shrine,
with toppling monuments displaced in mould and vegetation.
Inside the Tomb dry leaves abandoned from an earlier time
strew like blessings on the earth conjoined with cans and plastic lids ─
a modern way of saying Up yours, Death! Inside the vault
a Templar Knight is stretched along the floor. Inscriptions
to a child are faint upon the wall. A mort-room open to the sky recalls
the horror felt at flesh set cold to decompose and warn away
the robbers from the bones. I sensed a grey shape in my mind,
saw footprints of the wind in mud, imagined shadows that outraced
the sun. Remember how we heard the sound of pipes?
Was it music on a summer’s day, nearby house with an open door,
the ring tone of a mobile phone, or was it more?
Copyright © Mandy Pannett 2008
THE LONELY HEART
The whizz and zip of the moped
Rocketing down the dry sodium street,
The teenage girl's laugh cracks the dusk,
Behind brick and mortar,
Six o' clock signals the chink of tea-plates onto the table ...
The rusty hinge on the gate
Scrapes with the cheap high heel
As the girl turns aside ...
A fragile shudder, a throaty rev -
And the new-minted squire of the road,
Inclines his head with the certainty of a later conquest,
And the teenage girl's eyes shine with a timid lust.
Behind wood and glass,
The thin hand with the ghost wedding ring twitches the table-cloth ...
Whizz! Zap! Brr-00-mmm!
The acrid smoke her solitary love-token,
And like a whisper,
Stains the tea-plate
As she places it, unused,
In a dark and lonely cupboard.
Copyright © Fiona Dunn 2008
Disposal
The piano yielded pulled pushed
downstairs out the close out through the backyard
to our playground, that waste ground of
crumbled air-raid shelters and clumps of sour rhubarb.
It rested upright exhausted useless.
The men began to sway swing strong
sledgehammers onto embossed wood and stained ivory
pounding a rhythmic din of jangling dissonance
sounding a final tune requiring no soft hands to play.
A crowd watched, unsentimental in its silence.
Copyright © Maurice Franchesci 2008
Simmer Dim
Saft as babbie's breath
Shetland shaals hap the haughs
gowstie white, gowstie grey -
a gowden lowe lips the easins
ettlin ti rise eence mair.
Copyright © Mary Johnston 2008
The Bridge at Breich
Big, black stain,
Incongruous,
Insidious,
in once buff stone,
symbol of an age;
stark ingrained reminder
of a time long gone,
when iron horse
with belching breath
galloped along
the iron road
beneath the arch.
Back and forth
it daily strode
with wagons’-worth
of deep-earth lode,
to feed the fire
that made the smoke
that stained the stone
that built the bridge
that carries cows
across the road
whereon once strode
the iron horse,
with the belching breath
and the sparks that flew,
the clouds of steam,
the clank of wheels,
the squeal of brakes,
the last big gasp
at the end of the day
as the daylight died
like the men who toiled
to mine the coal
that fed the boiler
on the train
that caused the stain
on the bridge at Breich.
Copyright © Donnie MacNeill 2008
Night Music
In luminous sky, a semi-breve moon
holds one high note above the quavers
trembling on the water. Between the bar lines
of silhouetted pines, staccato stars, one
by one, puncture the lambent blue. I leave
the curtains open, let the music in.
Dawn is a slow diminuendo into grey.
Pianissimo. I close my eyes.
A hundred birds are practising woodwind
and percussion.
Copyright © Tracey Mathias 2008
Going Green Blues
Went to a Green Party meeting the other day
I was more confused when I came away.
But I learned about colours and additives,
And the dangers of voting conservative,
and one or two other hints,
about greenhouse gas and carbon footprints.
And how stoneground refers to bread,
not just to the state of my head.
So maybe I should commit
to a change of life, one more fit
for me and the planets environment
to make the most of my early retirement.
I’ll smoke tobacco less joints most of the time,
drink organic beer and natural wine,
I can’t say my hangovers will get any less rough
But if you’re gonna go green well you gotta get tough.
Copyright © J.M.Brown.2008
THE " A THOUSAND SMALL DELIBERATIONS"
Those with stubborn, routine-measured words
can protract the profit of a chilled age,
but they will fade, as rumours fade
being constantly replaced in webs and waves of wires,
what will never pass are these instead,
birdsong and cries of gulls that now last
all through the night, lamplight spurring
their persistence, theirs are the background breaths
and the sediments in our hearts,
and they can become the foreground
if breath makes the heart grow
while the body goes.
The blackbird pierces, crying its blade,
the air's light glass, the gulls
slash in waves. At dawn when I fade
and maybe surface in another tide
I will wait for the first cry
to deliberate my new premises.
Copyright © Davide Trame 2008
Time Unfinished
When I stumble down the garden,
waylaid by shrubs, roots
and ducking birds
I meander on Dad's
coal-dust days, Mum's
way with illnesses
and nights lighted
enough to play running
at Rounders
when living was shadowed,
struggling in a melee
of liver dinners
(good for the blood)
craving cherry cake
for the fruity bits
and tunnelled in mist,
mole-blind, sniffing
a path.
Glimpsing back, some
Sunday evenings
fired me up;
bacon toast
in parents' room,
Mills and Boon
and real coal fire;
walks on Sundays
after Church,
bag of sweets,
a threepenny's worth
at Mrs McKillop's
sweetie shop.
Her branded forehead,
dreaded magnet
for curious child
shushed, rushed out
then bridegroom ghost
wedding-suited.
Images and
jagged edges,
jig-sawed bride.
'I saw a ghost today.
No! two,' I whispered
but no-one heard
and bride and groom
quietly domiciled.
Daffodils bloomed
on a sloping
graveyard.
Growth grew from
birth, sisters,
endless cousins,
Eddie dying when
his Mother lived;
fruiting things
shrink before
flowering. Death
is not so much
dying as living
and cliches become
spades of spider-webs
in my head and
sometimes I just go
with that - to save time.
Or whatever.
I know days pass
where I perform,
pass knowledge.....
I do, and I still see
daffodils growing,
sloping in a graveyard.
I tell them,
my tutelage,
this is your destiny
where the daffodils bloom
in that dead field of dreams
and life on the edge
is where musicians play
and poets sing.
Claire, eyes dew-lipped,
sings her Father's song,
performs for him.
Grass grows green
and the moon shapes
where the sun has been.
Copyright © Christine Ford 2008
Dunbar Law
Today I coil a jute-rope round
the roosting hill above my rolling town,
tie it to my tail light, check
the tides and stretch my stiffened back.
I whiffle mud from off the frame,
nose my clanking pushbike south again,
across the contours. Love to say
how farms and hamlets wave me by,
but truth is, I could whistle through
at ninety and no-one would know.
Around the Neuk the folk are pale,
as landward gales numb up the face
of Fife, enamelled with a kingdom
crown right here. The wisdom
of the estuary calls in shrieks
of oystercatchers, little beaks
of pain which wheel and zoom.
It’s here I set up my maroon
and hitch the rope around it’s trunk,
whisper little prayers for luck.
An unloved sign here illustrates
a line against the sky. I trace
the humps from Arthur’s Seat, and mouth
their names. Bass Rock, and some way south
to fear, and Lothians. Left a bit,
I’ll send the fizzing rocket off to split
the difference between the hulks –
gaunt Cockenzie’s spire, the hunk
of lead-lined walls at stern Torness,
where Mausolus was laid to rest.
I light the fuse, and smell the sparks,
(instructions say to stand well back)
then boom! The shell divides the sky
from firth, and jerks the rope alive.
I watch the rocket racing, till it sputters,
dropping steeply over oil-flecked water,
see the rope go tight. I wind the slack
until it twangs, and then, not looking back
I set my face on bleak Dunbar
and tightrope-walk from Law to Law.
Copyright © Andy Jackson 2008
Andy lives and works in Dundee. This poem
was written in response to one of mine about his
fair city.
Colin
FASHIONING IRON
spewed from blackened conch
a channelled magma flames
clarty as pig-smoke
scabrous orange tamed
upbraids of ironstone
sparks that winnowed spae
vibrating hammer stroke
flow dripping from the face
in molten swales that scorch
the poet's eye
for days
Copyright © Gordon McInnes 2008
Gordon is from Glasgow
THE RAIL LINE TO BONNYRIGG
The narrow road drawn burin straight
Leads between the white grasses
Under the blue sky
Straight, unwavering a road not taken you would think
Except for the verges lined with sharp glinting blue of tin
Under the culvert, a scrawled chalk sign of someone young
Working perhaps at night in the shadows
Hands creeping into hands where the wind cannot spy
By day I am the only wanderer looking for signs
Tracing hoofprints that lead to empty fields
Tired of the hollow whistling wind.
Copyright © Anjana Basu, 2008
(Calcutta, India)
Back Yard
The word
trustworthy
said by grown-up ladies
with a pinch in their lips
as they pronounced it.
Even the silent ones, mothers
with breasts covered
up to the collar
bone.
They bore identical bowls of
chilled pistachio salad
to deck tables,
grass violently green in the
chemical summer.
They didn’t touch
the husbands.
Except a few, whose
husbands touched them
first, pulling the wives close
by waist and hip,
feeling flesh under cotton clothes.
Pinching with huge fingertips.
Jaw-teeth-grin
and their male eyes
on the grill or
on the other men.
I stood less tall.
The young women, round-mouthed, red-lipped,
backs arched, tits and ass swelling.
“Ain’t you a clever little girl!”
Glass eyes
on the young men,
faking maternal.
Big grins twinkling
in flat suburban heat.
Copyright© Miriam Louise Vaswani, 2008
Shoulder
As I roll
up the capped
sleeve of my
peacock green
coloured top now
and take a
look at my
shoulder, all
brown and freckled and
smooth
as skin ought
to be, I
wonder why
the rest of me
cannot be as
smooth, simple and
unassuming as
this one little
shoulder,
always forgotten,
neglected,
the last place to apply
moisturiser, and where
you never care to
look, except for
today - but -
it turns out that
it didn't want the
attention
after all.
Copyright © Nadia Tariq, 2008
PERHAPS
Copyright © Robert Black 2008
Robert Black, Scots-born, lives in Delhi
crayon places
it could have been
simple. but simple
things
are seldom so.
wait for me here, where
sun intersects rainbow
turning water into color.
that's the place.
but geography does not
move
as much as
mind. so i dreamed of
where crayons fly. only
to find you
standing there.
waiting.
"where have you been?"
Copyright © Richard Lighthouse 2008
Richard lives in Pasadena
TAKING SIDES
When he was picked up from the playgroup, the teacher said
'He's wild.'
That's when he became my grandchild.
'There's a load of wild folk in your family.' said Maggie.
And she should know.
When he formed his first early words
and teeth and a sudden sense of colour .
That's when Maggie
noticed he was just like her mother,
a designer in the theatre.
And her father, an ageing actor,
could see little of my side of the family
in his great-grandchild.
Until that day at the play group
when he went a little bit wild.
Copyright © J.M.Brown 2008
In Wi the New
Ah took the windae aff the sneck
An gie’d the knock a final check,
Auld left wi’oot a backward glance,
As fiddlers fiddled and dancers danced.
On the cill there stood his bairn,
Ah beckoned him, spiered, “Hoo’r ye fairin?”
He stared at me as if entranced,
Whiles fiddlers fiddled and dancers danced.
“Ah’m feart,” says he, “O comin in.
Ma paw, look whit yese done tae him!”
Says I, “Come ben an tak a chance.”
As fiddlers fiddled and dancers danced
Well, in he cam, an danced awey
Until the verra crack o day.
“Ah’m still no awfy shair at aw,
But this wee hoose is awfy braw
An if ye’ll stick me on yir wa,
Ah think ah micht jist stay,
At least til Hogmanay!”
Copyright © Donnie MacNeill 2008
Two poems
PEACHES
On the silver tray six peaches
their soft skins pink and pale cream.
In a minute I will peel a peach
suck its sweet juice.
I wonder what Renoir thought
as he painted soft peach-like faces?
I have five peaches now.
GAIETY GIRL
When I was thirteen - I was so serious,
bulging eyes, good pure mind.
But I smelled the East wind,
it told me to dance.
When I was sixteen, I danced,
years of dancing - in front of me,
and to the back.
A GAIETY GIRL.
What a break out, what a girl.
Lads came from near and far,
yet they never got near.
Then I smelled the North wind.
At twenty two I was getting old,
I was told:
fend for the future, find you
the right man;
you can, yes you can.
Now I sit in my shawls
and buttoned-up boots -
squirrels are dancing at the bottom
of my garden.
Stars are the footlights,
sun floods my stage.
At my elbows little children sing.
And I'm telling, telling,
I was a Gaiety Girl,
in flouncing gowns and
silver sandals.
The West wind is calling.
Copyright © Maureen Weldon 2007
Progress
On the television top
a teddy bear with legs aflop
is waiting for the revolution;
analogue or digital
he doesn’t understand it all
but likes the evolution.
It means they’ll watch the telly more
which keeps his bottom warm for sure
and helps his constitution.
Copyright © Áine Connolly 2007
Dumb Beast
Groinin , gretin, grievin,
the heifer
new-calfit
Ca’s tae her affspring
In the hyne awa park
Her edder, reid an boukit,
Swalt wi milk fit tae bursten,
Sweengs an sways wi ilka step.
Back gowpin, near brakit,
Stotterin and swaverin
she jynes the line o kye
alang the loan
tae the milkin.
Steamin, skitterin, stampin
Her cluifs stramp the chill concrete
Thrammel racklin agin the bars
Swollen tits like ample sausages,
Claucht by cauld steel clusters
Bitin an soukin
Reivin her calfie’s treisur’d bree.
Copyright © Kathleen Irvine 2007
New Year’s Eve
(J. I never knew you)
You enter my house.
I want to touch your hair,
amuse your eyes with jokes;
hold your face in my hands
and search your frailty;
feel the boldness that covers
those small bones;
hear your story and say:
Now you are safe.
The bells ring out,
I kiss you and you leave.
A stranger came and went
as the year turned.
One life has changed
as another becomes the night.
The fire needs a log…
copyright © gerard rochford 2007
Cork Oak
A spasm of snapped elastic,
you are a broken catapult.
Stabbed by the winter wind,
you bare your throat
and I feel locked in a thunderstorm.
Your bark is abstract leather
that gives to my touch.
I lie on my back
and watch your crown
scud across the sky.
Witness
Night is at a crossroads
fleeing over the horizon.
My neighbour takes his road
stepping on stones
across a stream.
He is saying goodbye
in another country:
an unreliable map
and an old passport.
I remember old times
when the world was new,
opaque, awake.
The vision is gone,
nothing to lose;
pleasure will come.
My own witness,
I take my road
never knowing how.
Copyright© Gordon P D Mason 2007
Kimonos
The Japanese singer smiled
as she plucked her dragon harp;
told of a forest’s constant flower.
Flat packed like an obi sash,
my last minute souvenir,
picked up quickly
between Tokyo flights,
was a Japanese equivalent
of these shallow pleated efforts
passed off as kilts
in the Capital.
But this old cotton counterfeit,
creased like my face after sleep,
requires no art
to warm me in winter,
protect my modesty
should the Postie ring.
Copyright © Irene Brown 2007
Christmas 1990
On a coal-stained carpet I lie
warmed by the fire of my flatmate.
The cinammon smell of mulled wine
soothes, soporific like a joint.
She decorates the tree -
her green eyes glint gold as
they reflect the flames of
the melting white candles,
and her red hair shines bright,
mirrored in its baubles.
I feel the cold from the window.
It's snowing. Virgin flakes float down
over Morningside and Oxgangs,
dampening everything down
smoothing everything out.
I still start to worry
about the mouse I caught
in the kitchen and placed
in the perils of the
tenement back garden.
Has his sleekit fur gone
cold, after his exile
to the white-whipped whaul of
an Edinburgh winter?
I dismiss him and return to
this woman's dominion, smiling
as she hands me a warm mince pie.
Copyright © David Eyre 2007
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Spemque metumque inter dubiis
(Hover between hope and fear. Virgil)
When darkness covers us the birds go silent.
Every night this time could be the last.
And when the sun goes, how do we survive
that such an emperor can be made so dull,
who has bathed us as if in gold.
Look out for the glint of a brave star.
Keep your eyes on that black sky
where you expect the moon
and her shining armourer.
Come dawn a black -bird sings of love,
the song- thrush joining in,
and a milkman working to feed his young.
Always a heart of hope feathered with fear.
Copyright © gerard rochford 2007
The Unborn Daughter
She is dreaming, but of what?
Kicking herself into form,
hatching plans of separation and
rebellion, an immaculate flow of
weaving womb prints, stretching out
eagle-eyed blue prints on her fleshy walls.
She is conscious of unconscious,
in a rapid eye of nothingness,
free of time yet everything that’s
ever been has led to her.
Letting off a head of steam,
home from the starting
of the universe, from the
nine to five of a pre-animal purity
and unchallenged yet by the
casting outwards in to the exile of air.
She is empress of the glittering eels
of a slithering sea mind that is
wrapping me in siren skin, pulling in.
Copyright © Alan Hill ( Vancouver) 2007
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Woman in Pink
She floats along in pink,
a strawberry ice-cream.
October day. Warm.
Last of the summer;
last of the pink.
Sunlight
A patch of sun.
Come, sit in it -
so few moments
till it fades.
Copyright © Gill McEvoy 2007
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Soldier on.
My Mum first met my Dad
or so she said,
when as a young thrill skirted girl
she saw him,
pissed too soon,
celebrating military demob.
He wobbled off his bike
at the sight of her
and tumbling,
missed her lips
but caught her heart.
Ah, love's a many splendid thing.
Copyright © J.M. Brown 2007
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Theatre
It was in Irish brogue,
South,
the drama was set
and back-dropped garden
reversing wooden house
on pivotal stage
sailing padre
tumbled over bench
in drunk dysfunction,
sherbetted effervesence,
dishonest mouth
played out in fractions
summing up grab
at happy time, snatching
breast of innocence
stumbling on sand-dunes
creating stories unread
but told. Stammering
bursts in retches
of truth,
biled by radical
power. Awake,
the spirit is crooked,
not broken.
Copyright © Christine Ford 2007
++++++++++++++++++++++
The Pool
It was the lusty laugh
of the girl at the pool
that set me thinking
about innocence
and children's deviating paths
in high-walled hedges
enjoying the amazing
maze of life. Unfazed,
they can't see beyond the heft
of a shelter, don't even want to;
instead, content to be planted,
growing roots on skates
they take in travel
where buds acorn
trails in little births.
Just something new
that happened today
like breathing in gulps
of happiness
in a lusty laugh.
Copyright © Christine Ford 2007
OF RUBBISH OR WINE
Writing rubbish
Is like a dish of fermenting grapes.
Yet sometimes, a rare wine sparkles
From the dregs.
Copyright © Maureen Weldon 2007
A Sunday
The gulls swift in sky,
dive like swallows
caught in air-beams
swathed in shrouds
deathly leaping
to life, when we visit
the Galleries. Today.
Picasso depicts fulsome
breasts and fluted
manhoods as we dine
in family-posed
tarted cafe where
quiched salad
feeds our appetite
and Richard Long's stride
arrests for a time
inside the woody
violins tuning,
strings hanging on
an opinion.
Loitering home,
shadows shade
picassoed form
crossed in
shalestones.
Copyright © Christine Ford 2007
Two new poems from A C Clarke
SLIPPAGE
On Glasgow Green the ghosts of washerwomen
stir vats of boiling linen to grey soup.
In fine weather the bushes bloom best shirts
but a miasma of wet sheets
hangs over the steamies, rain or shine.
Children are sailing kites among cloud-islands,
to tack across the blue-white main or droop
grounded by sudden calm. Any day
since the land was gifted, you'd see them. Yards away
a ragtag team nudges a football around
while lovers stroll the gravel walks
bare-thighed - or is it gloves and parasols
there where the trees fuzz in the distance -
the young men awkward, whatever the tense,
their voices muffled by traffic
for the city has never been still,
thronged by living and dead; the Clyde ripples
with ghosts of high-rigged convoys
bringing all quarters of the globe to quays
thickset and stubborn among the genteel infill.
The brewed air, sweet and heavy with Tennents,
has swooped through a million lungs.
Every step you take treads on a life -
a dropped coin, the handle of a knife.
The banks are crammed with phantom tenements.
The city's story, stifled under glass,
suspended in the amber of old songs
breathes in the space its citizens have made
playing their games, taking their pleasures, plying their trade.
Drying their laundry by their own long-trampled grass.
R.I.P.
Someone has placed a rhododendron flower
nicked from the park
at the head of this very dead rodent
whose mouth gapes in astonishment -
the speed with which the pavement smacked
a botched leap flat! Or else a car
which all too prematurely sent
the chancer to squirrel-heaven.
Whatever nailed that final grimace
it's there for all to see - disgrace,
for the roadsweeper to lift.
In woods, scavengers sift a corpse
bone-clean. Let it drop.
Our fore-runners went that way too.
Then we grew up
and the dead became ours:
had to be tucked into bed, wouldn't sleep
without stories - and flowers.
Copyright © A C Clarke, 2007
In the feedback from the Callander Poetry Weekend I was delighted to receive
this poem from Rowena M Love. It sums up the weekend beautifully, and in
the form of a poem!
Another of Rowena's poems (about the heckling cat)
is on Sally's blog - http://groups.msn.com/desktopsallye
Callander 07
for Sally and Ian
Serried tightly as
books on surrounding shelves,
we listen with our hearts.
Sheets of poetry
are origamied into
the shape of friendship.
Poets’ tea without
ceremony; golden pot
beside some bonsai.
Feasts from assorted
china; poetic banquet
is just as varied.
Poetry soup is
seasoned with Gaelic, Lallans,
soupçon of music.
Dialect, language
rub shoulders with form, freedom
and self-expression.
Deconstructing The
Heron; young grey cat heckles,
demands attention.
Mythic archetypes,
Merlin’s magic; then mounted
Buck bursts into song.
Callander bookshop,
haven for poets, provides
laughter, sighs, applause.
Savour its spirit,
then enjoy the afterglow
of inspiration.
Copyright © Rowena M Love 2007
And here's another Callander poem, this one from Diana Treffry
Discovery
Yesterday
I discovered parts of Callander
I never knew
how the garden path leads to Mexico
the shop contains several
Zen monasteries
the Kirk hall is a cavernous thesaurus
and that poets sing too.
Along a path by the river
the brambles are so sweet
they burst like a poem in the mouth
and the ghosts of at least three poets
taking the form of a heron
'cark carked' as he slowly flew
thrice disturbed
from contemplating his reflections.
Copyright © Diana Treffry 2007
Through the Window
Looking out the window,
watch the world go by.
Days and years multiply
children growing into teenagers
leaving toys abandoned, alone
left to younger siblings who have now come along.
The amount of washings I’ve seen hung on lines
the grass boxes emptied millions of times
the tears and laughter shared in the street.
Close over the window.
Now the story’s complete
the police raids, the fire trucks
the sunshine, the rain
the snow, the wind
the nesting robin
all come back again.
Neighbours who’ve left
and those who remain
and others we know
suffered the joys and the pain
barbecues and summer
the muddy filled backs
the murder…
all left their marks.
Life inside and out
on any one street
through it all the noise
one single heart beat.
Copyright © Laura McEwing 2007
Playing The Trick
Living is mailing me back,
posting me in grubby manila
folds that have been
wrongly stamped and
send to childhood and then
further back, hurtling, special
delivery, towards my birth;
Finally, to drop me on the
dusty doormats of the dead
as i grow backwards as I am
panting on the stairs and
combing over graying hair;
My body now my Father’s,
and then slipping back again
in to the grandfather I hardly knew,
but who is here now and living
through my clotting limbs as
50 years ago he held me as a baby
at his death as the unsent letter
of his body creased and turned
upon its self and he
sealed me upon his chest.
I was his future and he
cradled me in mummifying
hands into his empire of
fading faun and grey and
tartan robe, knowing, that
now, he would continue to survive.
Copyright © Alan Hill 2007
Alan is in Vancouver, Canada.
Beware of false prophets.
'All property is theft.'
Was your revolutionary tirade
as you stole my last sausage
and chunk of bread
and berated me
for owning a
one up,
one down,
tap outside,
toilet at the end of the yard
iron ore workers cottage.
Or half owned.
It was my first wife's,
and when I explained
your principles,
your theory of theft
received nothing,
when she gently
threw me out.
Copyright © J.M.Brown 2007
Nostalgia
I'm sick of then
and them and there and those
and all these proximity pronouns
that mean far away and long ago.
It's always someone else
somewhere else
some other time.
I'm sick of todays lived for yesterdays.
The nostagia that is my Scottish birthright:
Wallace and the Clearances
have nothing to do with me
(aside from being flung at me
every year at school
as a substitute sense of self).
I want my own battle
my own adventure
my own history.
I'm sick of the present
presented in transparent gift-wrap
and a big pink bow.
I'm sick of quiet
studious
hard-working
ideal
perfect
predictable existence
among rugged untamed landscapes
that are now nice neat towns
with community centres
heritage centres
shopping centres.
I want back my teenage ignorance
that frantic tumbling headfirst quest
for something - I didn't know what it was.
That sense of something careless and
consequential (but not until tomorrow).
But that battlefield is built over;
I'll never get it back.
Copyright © Meghan McAvoy 2007
Maize Cutting, (on the Somme)
A field mouse ran for cover in the maize.
He darted and ducked,
looking all around,
trying to stay hidden in the morning haze.
But the enemy was rumbling ever near.
In no man’s land,
nowhere to hide,
the little mouse was being swallowed by fear.
Not far now, till he reached safe ground.
Keep going, push on,
Don’t stop, ignore
the mechanical, industrial, killing, sound.
The maize stood tall, against the cutting machine.
A bumper harvest,
a good return,
fifty thousand dead, before the Midday sun.
My thoughts return to the field of my youth.
Bin lid for shield,
broom handle for sword,
playing at soldiers, with no mention of truth.
Copyright © Alec McNeil 2007
The Owusu Party
Staccato lungs wheezing in and out;
a joyful accompaniment to 'La Vie en Rose'.
Strum, thrum of callus on string; the one day of summer,
and you, 'La Dame aux Camellias'.
Guitar torsos, tanning in the sun,
battled the massacre of grass next door,
but our comradeship won the war.
I wanted to dance across your lawn,
to shimmy in the shimmer of fire -
at your next party, I may take flight.
We stayed longer than we thought,
till night parcelled up this summer sky
and the colours of your kaftan unravelled to grey.
Copyright © Liz Loxley 2007
Standing Stone, Easter Pitcorthie
I pass my hand over its flank,
probing dimple and furrow.
Were they hollowed by frost or ice
blistering the stone's skin,
rain licking the soft places
or lichen gently rubbing,
nuzzling like a calf's head
against its mother's belly?
Or were they made by flint or chisel,
instruments of human purpose
grazing the elemental world
on its unemphatic course?
Copyright© Robin MacKenzie 2007
The Ultrasound
The first sight of her, of an existence
that until that moment we had not yet
fully felt, or truly believed.
The alchemy of dumb elements,
the thickening of flesh,
of nothing becoming something.
A life pinned into the circle of its yolk
and clutched inside a rounded fist of womb,
crowned within the lamplight of the darkened lab,
the traffic noise beyond this dark that comes
from ringing roads,
the circle of the sky around the Earth and
further out again the universes and their countless
suns that for a heartbeat have come layered
into lines to turn around this coming child.
Copyright © Alan Hill 2007
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