picture poem 3

Electricity hums around those pylons.
The sky blushes
its last light
a faerie dusk
before Halloween night.

Without the children
I've been left with just myself
and what to do today. I've chosen
to hide away
out of the house
for when the monster hordes come
and go guising myself
with camera, binoculars
and the treat
of a car loaned from my dad.

I've been playing
the stay-at-home
far too long,
just me and the bathroom reflection.

I go out
travel back into the scenery of
when I was a boy. Down along the shoreline
and then up and over the hills
towards the Port.

At the high point
in the climb I see
the sky flushing
and am caught between that
and being hurried
by car headlights
right at my back
I feel reddening
embarrassment at myself:
for slowing down
to look,
making a point of stopping to look.

I try not see myself as others see me:
as this lonely man out in the hills at gloaming.

But I pull over
(they don't know me: I could be anyone)
I get out
and see what
captures the day in a way
that clicks into place.
I am not
just someone out with a camera.
The trick
that click of recognition
comes from not just
being in the right place
at the right time. No.
You must stop. You must look. You must see what lights your spirits.

This is the magic hour. When the unseen
sprites and daemons charge the fields.
I was there. I stopped. I saw it.
That was me.

picture poem 2

Goldfinches thrill me.
The little dabs
of bright yellow, red and black
that tease
the drab around them
in sunny weather
feathers.

It was in Airdrie at in-laws
where I could go
to see them
- exotic Sri Lanka
 come to Scotland almost -

and also your fledgling home.

Your attraction was a loud crack of gunshot.
You magically appeared
blasting out all background
in tropical colours
and somehow I managed
to ruffle your feathers enough
to capture
and bring you home
these 18 years.

Till you got away from me.

Alone now
in the house I'm having to
search out
what it was
that was me. Before you.

I thrill at goldfinches.

So I've set the bait.
Put seeds in the garden
and waited right here
at my very own table.

And, little flecks of promise,
they came.

They come.

picture poem 1

Night brings ice. 

The morning finds the phone

dead

a black bone

of some dug up beast.

I keep the blinds tight

shut, the curtains snibbed

against the frigid light

outside my chilled digs.

I'm stuck.

The day already frozen. 

                                     but

I get set
and go

out to the park

and its glacial light
show. 

The grass is sugar dusted and 

leaves

fall

crackling like fire.

Water dreeps at their tips like a runny nose.

I walk on 

I see

backlit
by the low swung sun:

bright dying leaves

steaming waltzes into the air.

A thing in me moves,
caught in a right state:
thoughts slide
and melt
slide and melt
until

-tickled water
just at the boil-

comes the lift. That this

captured ice

can thaw
and give rise

right here in the dark days.

I take the image and,

rising,

follow the drift home.