Full Term

Hangover from yesteryear’s lesser days:

Rain, like wrapping paper, falls in sheets.

This house, shrouded in New Year's grey,

Was a cradle of ebullient Yuletide light;

Now the tree is back in its box, the wreath

Resting in peace in the wheelie bin.

Our firstborn has almost stopped teething.

We’ve barely dented the Roses tin,

A snowball of Christmas cake remains.

The nights are drawing out again. On the table, 

Our 2yo scrawls with pens

While we await his late rival.

All our clocks are out of synch.

The boiler clicks off and on at once,

As if releasing an uncertain breath,

Or remembering something of significance.

The Idiot Flies

Their movement is a kind of pain
circulating about the room.
The idiot flies are back again,

triangulating their doomed campaign
to quit the space they assume.
Their movement is a kind of pain,

limp prelude or weak refrain,
weaving at an invisible loom. 
The idiot flies are back again.

Trapped by sunlight, held by rain –
above all nature abhors a vacuum –
their movement is a kind of pain

of ceaseless endeavour, one in vain
repeated, reprised and resumed.
The idiot flies are back again,

etching the signals of the brain,
until one smites them with a broom.
Their movement is a kind of pain.
The idiot flies are back again.

Deeside

Fourteen years. Faster than an eye could flick.

Sweet little Ballater, this regal town

With its quaint cornershop confectioner,

Beeching-ed station, Balmoral Tavern,

Lochnagar Indian, two Co-ops, one Queen.

Still the same. Still different. Still home.

No flag atop the Balmoral pole this week,

Just a smattering of snow to help to keep

The skiers and lifties up at Glenshee.

Fourteen years ago you scrambled up

A hillside, young poet with an old soul,

Average mind, lungs full of hash smoke,

Trying to write, trying to know something

Of life: “the river shivers like a silver shoal,

A strip of foil unravelled.” The little distance

You’ve travelled. Returning with two sons,

A wife, your parents: older, slower, more

Mortal. Their bequest, this regal town,

These sterile fields, ancient woods,

Mountains and valleys echoing with

The sound of their unspoken thoughts.

Dores Inn Revisited

The first time we came here,

Sans enfants, we were the children

Modishly trying to be grown up.

A thank you meal for your parents:

Teacherly in mood, quietly composed,

Gentle-voiced, modest-meaned.

I barely knew them. Nothing was certain,

Our offspring no more than an inkling,

A light blinking on broken water.

Now a taste of freedom, time regained.

Just a couple of anonymous covers

Dining alongside resident and tourist:

A long line of Germans chewing steak,

Mute Scots wi’ nary an aye nor a nay,

Flustered waiter fussing over the wine.

After we ate, a six-piece folk-band

Struck up their husky tune. We snuck out,

Drink in hand, to watch the bats flicker

Over the loch into the watery night.

You said you wanted me to taste

Of cigarettes. To my regret we had none

To savour, that other flavour predating us.

So instead to home, where we swiftly fell

Into the arms of sleep: toddlers each.

Findhorn

A hiking boot delivered by the sea:
beached and kippered, almost box new.
Then a shod, sodden, grey hoodie -
pockets ripped out - and hidden from view

by seagrass a woman's silver watch,
leather strapped to a slim carpus;
and under its brine-filmed face, the twitch
of a hand moving beneath the glass.

Then behind the dunes the rusting car,
keyed ignition waiting for the ghost
of the driver to return, put it in gear,
depart the place she found to get lost.