Greenloaning

 

 

 

The Ochils, midsummer, and no telling

the raincloud from the rain;

 

dark plantation spruce loom

through the smirr

like a gang of ghosts

 

blackface sheep plunge wearily

into the high bracken

 

and soft moon-coloured cattle

stand drenched and silent

half in grass, half in sky.

KInbuck 6133 Unodourised Gas Installation

Kinbuck 6133 Unodourised Gas Installation

After Edward Thomas

Yes, I saw the name - white letters on a blue board

looming through the smirr one sodden July afternoon

on the Kinbuck-Braco Road.

No Gas Board vans, no men in hard hats and high-vis vests

but there had to be something leaking

from that lumpen mess of pipes and ducts

to rile the farmland gulls to such a high hollering rave

though when I leaned my bike against the gate

all I could smell was wet grass and wet dock

and buttercup and cow parsley rising moistly

through the summer mush

then somewhere a gusty breath of gorse

and broom and dog rose and vetch

and, farther and farther, all the rainy

blooming life of Perthshire and Stirlingshire.

Bracken Rising

peewits tumble and flounce

over the dark ploughed earth

curlew, somewhere,

are flinging cry after cry

into the blue day

until the world seems made

of nothing but noise

and in a ditch by Drumcairn

out of the tangled dead

winter stalks

tiny and unstoppable

this green push

Sheriffmuir Bike Ride

Sheriffmuir Bike Ride

Crap-stained, straggly as drunks,

bleating, panicked sheep overflow

the tarmac into dykes and ditches

slam against fences

swirl round on themselves

heads and hooves eddying

vaguely north toward

the cold moor water

of the Millstone Burn

its thin dark rush.