In The Country

1.Passing Through The purple heather’s paling, the bracken’s bronzed The Bens are brewing a mist for the forest’s floor And I pass like a wraith through the glens with my two companions Treading the footsteps of travellers gone before Tulloch, the Templar land ploughed by Nathalan Ballaterach, lodged in the child Byron’s heart The Quoich, where Scottish chieftains planned rebellion This is a land where great endeavours start The purple heather is paling, the bracken is bronzed The Bens are brewing a mist, the fine rain spitting And I pass like a wraith through the glens with my two companions Treading the footsteps of travellers gone before Lady Diana, dead in a Paris tunnel Chaplin, King of the silent silver screen Stevenson, master poet and storyteller Woven in Ballochbuie’s forest scene The pines are cool, the wildcat’s ways are secret Sudden, a deer bolts out from the windy wet The car brakes slam, it flees, with red heart thudding So light the scales of life and death are set 2.Train Trip Home The carriage hurtles on to darkening skies A red bull paws the ground of his green empire Bovine Napoleon. His breath looks sulphurous Waves like steeplechasers leap the tide Whitely rearing and plunging to the coast A gull flies off on a highly pressing engagement Over a cyclist, pedalling for pleasure Rowans like blood beads spatter verge and woods A buzzard scans a field of grain for lunch Fast food- a rabbit take-way, its flight like fire Wind-farms winnow the clouds on the horizon Here and there cliffs dropp to crazy paving Blue marbled waters sliding over deeps In Perth, meth addicts queue up for their scripts Their benefits, their bag of reduced shopping Women pluck clothes from a clothesline A sparrow hops across from peg to peg. In the Tay, the murky undertow of currents Shuttlecock fish from reed to reed and back Sun shines its searchlights into Angus corries A heron stands in the mud flats at Montrose Like a kirk steeple. Waiting to spear a fish A crow sits on a street lamp, feathered mugger Through this rural idyll a ladette F’s & C’s, too drunk to stand to pee A girls’ day out, all thirty-ish and plastered The WC receives her with a groan Stonehaven under moonlight, cold and dreich And how they drag, those final chugging miles The train slides on across the shining river Sparkled with stars, the darling of my city Wearily up the dank steps from the Green To bus, to home, to bed, to sleep, to dreams Of the dear dead, rising from narrow graves Walking towards me, smiling, arms outstretched. 3.Mother of Pearl Mother of pearl Shell with an angel’s membrane Pink and silver sheen 4.Grey Heron Motionless heron Grey mist rolls off river Heron does not stir 5.Crow’s Court Room Black crow pleads guilty Crimson gash is evidence Flies clinch the verdict