The Harry Potter Train Et Al (6 Poems)

The Harry Potter Train et al (6 poems) 1: Animals at Large, Oban The salmon farm looks like a wedding marquee tent Or a huge mosquito net for a Caliph’s harem The fishy banquet of pellets comes hailing down An uninvited gull on the outside looking in Drools at the salmon hedonism Nearby on Sgeir Donn Island The local Oban seal colony Rolls over to face the tourists Line dancing seals bob up black in the waves Like little fat nudists, flashing their chubby tummies With exuberant whiskers, Victorian and lavish. They eye you up, then vanish in foam and spray On the top of the Dutchman’s Hat greylag geese from Canada Rest like aircraft travellers, after a gruelling flight At Oban harbour, peeled prawn sandwiches Sit cheek by jowl with lobsters, fresh from creels Mussels, crabs and oysters, Langoustines (live or cooked) Hang around looking shelly and hard Headstrong gulls, slap the ground with their flippers Forage and screech and dive, slick opportunists The gravelly, shingly beach, ripples and rucks Sucked by the tides, the pebbles like small, lost souls Spat out by the weary ocean A cormorant holds up its arms like a prophet, Old Testament preacher of death and retribution. In the whitewashed sky, terns swoop Over the housed breasts of tourists The sea is filling a dead dove’s open beak With foam, like bridal blossom 2: Footsteps on an Island, Kerrera Following the star of time and movement Walkers tread a path of many turns In the aftermath of Culloden Flora MacDonald came here as a prisoner Whoever burns his backside must sit on it. Quarry workers stepped from whitewashed cottages Salmon fishers, weavers, and distillers Millers and peat cutters all laboured here Lobster fishermen supplied great liners Shellfish packed in ice for Cunard’s Queens The value of the well’s known when it’s dry A Hunting Tower held Hebridean chieftains Hold back your dog until the deer falls down The chief’s house has a slippery doorstep. The artist, Turner came to paint a castle Beauty’s fine but it won’t boil the pot. Ministers preached from sea stacks in extremity Nothing can get into a closed fist. At Cnoc na Faire, a clutch of childrens’ graves Hebrideans who died in Glasgow’s slums The grass that grows in March will fade in April. St. Marnock’s monks walked round in meditation What comes in with the wind goes with the water. Bronze Age Cists hold early walkers’ bones The moon is none the worse for barking dogs In the bay lies the wreck of a tobacco boat That plied its trade as far as the Caribbean. A little hole will sink a mighty ship. A wave will raise its head on quiet seas 3) Climbers on Ben Nevis A blonde hairdresser in a bikini and a pair of hiking boots. A man driving a Model T Ford A piano, carried up by removal men from Dundee A group of Glasgow University medical students, pushing a bed A Fort William man pushing a wheelbarrow. Mr Campbell, Ardgay, Ross-shire with a barrel of beer A horse and cart and several wheelchair users. Kenny Campbell carting a whole church organ A whimsical sheep, watching them all pass by 4) Inverness- Fort William Inverness rolls past. Jimmy Chung And classy canines blow the heather myth Clean out of the lochs A trampoline covered in frost and autumn leaves Trembles in icicle air, no drum beat heels Pound on its stretched, racked skin Three pheasants sashay out of pagoda pines A loch as old as Methuselah wrinkles Its wrinkled brow. Its waves collapse in shudders Raging Highland burns pretend they’re torrents Over Drumnadrochit clouds are pregnant Heavy withy winter, weighted down with frost How freeing to slip past these trees like a fox Eyes darting from side to side Greedy to miss not a\ scrap of the land’s beauty Cliff faces crack where pioneering grasses Claws at a niche. At Glenmoriston An eagle widens its wings on a timber perch Like a minister clearing his throat for a fierce tirade At Fort Augustus the trees are lemon and lime Like girls at a Sixties wedding A head squared pensioner toddles Through puddles of spray A rusting barbecue sulks in a sodden garden Its table umbrellas closed like weeping bats A herd of hinds, due north of Invergarry Lift startled heads, wide eyed and curious And all along the Great Glen, mist is coiling Round the hills, like a torc, like a Celtic snake 5) The Jacobite Express Puffa-puffa -chugga-chug Creche on train goes jitter-bug Glimpse of bracken, trail of steam Sweets and crisps…a bump….a scream Rain and sun, and sleet and hail Railway geeks…a minke whale Corries, lochans, goodie bags Pottermania, crags, peat hags Jacobites would turn and run From this tin of family fun Viaducts and Neptune’s stair Migraine. Oh thank God, we’re there! ! 6) In Memoriam: Margaret Elizabeth Petrie Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve? She has gone to her rightful rest, her time to leave The family she nourished and nurtured at her breast. A loyal wife by love and contentment blessed Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve? She saw her slice of the world, Australia-bound For her father went wherever work could be found Came sailing home on a roistering, rolling tide Via Ceylon to Gordonmills, Woodside Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve? No money for education, not for a lass Her teenage years were work, not books in class Married at nineteen, play-time over and done A bairn in the pram and her husband fighting the Hun Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve? The Armistice brought flittings, and nappies to dry A house at Beechwood, skylarks singing on high On the edge of the country then, the growing town Where the summers turned her family August-brown Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve? Her days were baking, washing, feeding the fire And that was the top and tail of her whole desire To watch her children grow to man’s estate And in their turn, to settle and find a mate Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve? Her soul was stout, her view of the world was clean With another roll of the dice, she might have been An artist, dancer, scholar, highly bred And if she regretted that, she never said Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve? There’s nothing to mourn but much to celebrate For a step goes light when it’s not weighed down by hate And the years go fast. Time, time decrees the end, Much thanks to a mother, great- grandmother, friend. Because she lived life well, what’s there to grieve?