After Dark

Scotland

Packed cemetery and empty presbytery
Clutch a grim faith beyond which glitter
All afternoon and evenly spaced
Overspilled graves from recent days
South-facing and respectfully distanced

Walk much later on a moonless night
The trafficless road non-reflective
Guide past summit and far copse:
There is no village to speak of
The little ricks roar, hiddenly spate

Brief borders within pitch quiet
And one day may pick out a bud
Or blade but nothing has ever shone
Beyond a last black row of gravestones
South-facing and respectfully distanced

Death of a Resort

At a gesture from the finger
Of the pier towards the fishshop
Taming gulls a lonely jukebox
Overflows its ‘fresh' catch
In off-seasonality

The sandcastles crumbling there
Once trails of poetry in their race
To release each brief bond,
Casting down in sure cascades
Of drying sand a history

Are a sleeping town’s gentility,
A mockery, perhaps a crack
At detritus in the lapping
Echo cast around affronted
Wynds, stark terraces

By Her Side

Two clocks, two clocks tick
With the beat of her heart
Tip-tap, between us,
Punctuality verged on flight,
Nearby a distant barking dog
Caught inside the hollowed tin
Of an empty radiator mounting
The only warmth between us
Tonight embodies everything
But this sound of our hearts
Tip-tap, between us