dawn so soon – and swallow from your still-full cup.
Water. The times I’d call as a child
for a drink, till you’d come, sit on the edge
of the bed in the dark, holding my hand,
just as we held hands now and you died.
A good last word.
Nights since I’ve cried, but gone
to my own child’s side with a drink, watched
her gulp it down then sleep. Water.
What a mother brings
through darkness still
to her parched daughter.
Drams
The snows melt early,
meeting river and valley,
greeting the barley.
*
In Glen Strathfarrar
a stag dips to the river
where rainclouds gather.
*
Dawn, offered again,
and heather sweetens the air.
I sip at nothing.
*
A cut-glass tumbler,
himself splashing the amber …
now I remember.
*
Beautiful hollow
by the broad bay; safe haven;
their Gaelic namings.
*
It was Talisker
on your lips, peppery, sweet,
I tasted, kisser.
*
Under the table
she drank him, my grandmother,
Irish to his Scotch.
*
Barley, water, peat,
weather, landscape, history;
malted, swallowed neat.
*
Out on Orkney’s boats,
spicy, heather-honey notes
into our glad throats.
*
Allt Dour Burn’s water –
pure as delight, light’s lover –
burn of the otter.
*
The gifts to noses –
bog myrtle, aniseed, hay,
attar of roses.
*
Empty sherry casks,
whisky – sublime accident –
a Spanish accent.
*
Drams with a brother
and doubles with another …
blether then bother.
*
The perfume of place,
seaweed scent on peaty air,
heather dabbed with rain.
*
With Imlah, Lochhead,
Dunn, Jamie, Paterson, Kay,
Morgan, with MacCaig.
*
Not prose, poetry;
crescendo of mouth music;
not white wine, whisky.
*
Eight bolls of malt, to
Friar John Cor, wherewith to
make aquavitae.
*
A recurring dream:
men in hats taking a dram
on her coffin lid.
*
The sad flit from here
to English soil, English air,
from whisky to beer.
*
For joy, grief, trauma,
for the newly-wed, the dead –
bitter-sweet water.
*
A quaich; Highland Park;
our shared sips in the gloaming
by the breathing loch.
*
The unfinished dram
on the hospice side-table
as the sun came up.
*
What the heron saw,
the homesick salmon’s shadow,
shy in this whisky.
Moniack Mhor
Something is dealing from a deck of cards,
face up, seven, a week of mornings, today’s
revealing the hills at Moniack Mhor, shrugging off
their mists. A sheepdog barks six fields away;
I see the farm from here.
Twelve-month cards, each one thumbed, flipped,
weathered in its way – this the eighth, harvest-time,
a full moon like a trump, a magic trick.
It rose last night above this house, affirmative.
I sensed your answer – hearts.
Or a single hour is a smiling Jack, a diamond,
or a spade learning a grave; charms or dark lessons.
Something is shuffling; the soft breath of Moniack Mhor
on the edge of utterance, I know it, the verbs of swifts
riffling the air