Lost At Sea

Today I got a first proper view of what my new pamphlet with Roncadora Press is going to look like.  And it's entirely beautiful, thanks to the skill and artistry of Hugh Bryden.  It's 4 metres long, folded into zig-zags, with the skyline of Shetland running right through it, and the poems 'floating' in the shifting sea. 

The sea really looks as if it's shifting and has light glancing off it, due to the aforementioned artistry.  This photo is just a wee bit like it.  Hugh has done less sky and much more sea.  But the linear feel is about right.  It's off to the printers next week. 

Coincidentally I came home from work to find a copy of 'New Shetlander' on the kitchen table, sent because they've kindly published two of the poems which will be in 'Lost At Sea'.  Here's one of them.

Telescope

Dark wood polished by use and damaged
down one side, it’s been
familiar to my touch since childhood.
He must have known its balance
intimately, weighed it in decisions,
fingered the fine milled edges of its eye.
All through his grainy, deck-tilt years
he shut it safe away.   

I learned to tweak with a fingernail
the tiny pin on the metal shutter
which slides back to reveal  
the eyepiece just as
I’m pulling on the casing, shlunck
shlunck, and this
neat cubit passes me
the vision of a sea eagle.

Far back through the glass
a wide grey sea and slant
of rain, a rig of swaying furrows,
medallions of salt, each stamped
by some small imperfection on the lens,
a whorl and ripple that lays
a long century
between my eye and his.

Black Umbrella

One afternoon of gusts and fields,
whirling a black umbrella
with a broken wing, he peacocked
on the climbing frame.
It was a one-off,my lucky snap
of his grey-pink sky,
some story he was telling,
about a kid who could fly.

The brown Nith slip-streamed

Downpouring rain’s a meld
of air and earth:
the  brown Nith slip-streamed
over the flood banks,
the fields’ surge levelled
with its metal.

Wild night follows wild day follows wild night.  Our garden arch is blowing away (chocked up now with a mighty stake).  We've guy-roped the fruit cage.  The sheep are skittish, and shake water out of their ears. And the Nith has burst its banks at Auldgirth, I reckon Dumfries will be going under by lunchtime.

Paul came home from London on the train last night and nearly got no further north than Lancaster, the station roof was blowing off at Penrith.  Tv shows the sea at Maryport towering twice as high as the pier.  Piers usually burn down, but this one is battling an opposite fate.  Very apocalyptic.

Here's our garden pond in a relative lull this morning.