Glasgow, Monday Evening

After closing time, rain and wind has swept
all dirty breath away. Walls, older city cliffs
chaos of hometime’s deluge has left the city
broad and winded, euphoric, with glossed
neon washed onto its streets. Sky slides from
lilac east to cobalt west and in the south
canyons fill with pristine dusk.

Pigeons in Calder Street

Blue birds shoal in morning flight from canyon walls of Calder Street.
High above Govanhill’s wet dirt and spit,
sharp wings divine the air as one ellipse
drifts on the wind, rolls away,shows brilliant underparts,
flickers down on slate like rain on quarried rock,
murmuring the next move.
Black arrows hurl themselves on linen sky.

The Dram
Give me wet barley husks and gaping grist
washback malt and worts and sweetened sparge.
Let me add fonts of gurgling peaty stream
or icy gleaming springs fresh with white pearls.
From brimming tuns of yeast and swirling hot,
let low wines brought by throbbing veins drift up
through copper still and copper still and still.
Let glassy spirit rise, distilled and pure,
make feints with head and tail and fiscal form -
a young mermaid so pristine and yet so strong.
And let me smell her alchemy at last
in sherry, cherry red or bourbon brass.
And in the cask house, let me with angels share
this taste of Scotland's honeyed paradise.

Skein
Above the fist of Glasgow,
above a dieseled thrashing vein,
a thread drifts on a grey lagged sky.
A black-loosed chevron pulls itself in
and out of shape,
a ragged curve of northbound flight.
And then, a silent pulse of innate sight,
the thread frays, thins, dissolves to arctic migrant light.

Tropic

Below the weathered streets and concrete,
soaked with Glasgow’s torrential day,
hidden under struts and enchanted cobbled lanes
an underworld exists. An archipelago of islands and peninsulas.
Air thick with tropics, creaturesof exotic shapes, brilliantly coloured.
They bathe in the light of orange vapour.
Rich drops of rain drip from the canopy unseen.
Lagoons between the tracks recline and startle
lights of vessels sailing by,
merchant ships of cranberry and spice,
metalled with metro cammell,
to mine its precious rock,thrum and thrash,
joining people with people
And then at the very edge of this humid world
bound by caramel and cocoa, a cold and hungry wind
embraces sad faces of those who leave this clockwork paradise.

Yard

Steel men at Govan docks
still thread their way in shifts
from their bullish ship yard gate.

They march in ones and twos
in jeans and navy tops
and hold alls slung on shoulders.

Cranes peer to see them go
down the bleak Govan Road,
litter rises in applause.

Govan Subway salutes
them with black granite
and drifts them to some other heartland.

Return from Mull

I’m back from the place,from the sound of colour.
Ginger and cream at Glengorm and Island
roughed up by winter,
but whistling green at the Mishnish Lochsin
a tune of cold stone blue.

Tails of black and basalt curl tidewards as we speed,
chasing the smooth-salt Ross,
cut here and there with chips of wind,
their protests in lacy frills of foam above an honest pascal light.

And the place, land, sea, soil and airfused into a scene so still
the minotaur of mountain landside sleeps,
astounded by its own beauty
and us, the only thing in flight.

By evening, back at Oban,tired hips of mountains cut off by Lorn
lies down on a citrus April night.

And now we are back to blood and bone and smoke,
cobbles laid in crooked rows that brings my rhythm up short.
Can you wait a second, while I adjust my settings?
To full screen mode, default mode, Glasgow mode
and commit these things to mind.

Low Tide

Thursday 8.25 am, low tide.
The Clyde has drained away.
He lies unconscious now lower
than his banks of dark wet skin.
His body is opened up and peered into.
Internal organs are revealed, blunt
and bloodless in salt molasses.
They lift and fall in his sleep.