norvegicus in immense numbers. Crangon vulgaris

on Seafield’s sandy beaches. Lithodes maja, from stomach

of cod. Porcellana platycheles, Crail and Fifeness, low

water. Stenorhynchus rostratus in near every dredgeful.

Eurynome aspera, Prestonpans and Portseaton.

This deep-water form is rare in the firth. P. puber,

caught on deepsea lines, east and west

of Inchkeith, off Fidra, and May. With M. marmorata

in roots of Laminaria, on the Newhaven shore

after storms. We have dredged it, and also collected it

at Portobello. But Ophiocomina nigra, a specimen

from Mr. Damon, marked “Black Rocks, Leith,” I have

sought at the lowest spring tides, without success.

THE SHAGS, WHOSE CONSERVATION STATUS IS “OF LEAST CONCERN”

What night-collector conveniently forgot

her bag of demons on the neighbour’s roof?

Cackling softly over the stick tool of 4 a.m.,

loosening the drawstring with clothy knee

and elbowings, they’d pop out shaking the dregs

from their hackles, consumed by evil

laughter, ahistorical croaks, benthic creaks,

then shrieks and howling underscored

by homuncular medieval babies in sotto voce,

declamations via voice prosthetic, robot

pet sounds, and I lay there cursing them, the whole

family, though I had nothing to be up for.

On vertebral rock near the Caiplie Caves

like shreds of an outline or shadows freed

of their antecedents, they dry their wings,

eyes closed, faces to the sun. Centre of no

universe, they have the run of the great ancillary.

Though likely they loom large in the imagination

of the sand eel whose peripheries

they torment. As their shouting did mine

wee hours in the silt of my own domain before

the chicks fledged, presumably, the parents

moved on. And I missed them then, as we do

the ones loved best when not around.

“GOODBYE TO COCKENZIE POWER STATION, A CATHEDRAL TO COAL”

— The Guardian, Sept. 15, 2015

It might’ve sprouted from the rhizome of the Leven

Syncline, fed on a post-war optimism

without joy, full of use, liberated

from embarrassing sensitivity. Every idea a lesser one

in proximity to its architecture of practice, purity

of self-definition. Cockenzie Station demonstrating

the irreducible — gas, ash, atmosphere

deformed by a temperament

(May Island

nostalgic in its visual field, quaint

with legend, relics, conservation, charm,

whose old ways are showing,

infrastructure repurposed,

adapted, added to, full of feeling)

under which Glenrothes matured.

Sister stations at Kincardine, Methil, Longannet.

Thousands daily down the open pits

three thousand feet into

the Carboniferous East Lothian, obliged

by the Brutalist winding tower. The water used

was town water. Rail-borne, road-borne coal

pulverized, blown to the furnaces

(and Stevenson’s lighthouse

a gothic castle, retrofitted

for automation and designated

heritage. May’s volcanic columns

are outdated, permanent, proudly

whitewashed in birdshit and myth)

living and dying by viability and the violation

at the core of achievement. Which, at a distance

is restful, has meaning. Two five-hundred-foot towers

visible from Edinburgh

an avant-garde mechanical gesture,

the modern right to accomplish nothing exceptional

and to do it without style. Cultural criticism

at its fullest expression