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Scots, now a Northumbrian. Married, 49, with three sons. Two poetry collections published; The Spar Box (Vane Women) won a PBS Recommendation. Now working on poems about Border Reiver women in the sixteenth century.
The wooden surface of the door
Feels rough and warm to my face.
Rain sprinkles his fair hair dark
And he is so weary that we do not speak.
Closing my eyes to the speckled gloom
I hear singing, the hum
Of old men, The Lord’s My Shepherd,
Maybe just blood in my ears
From jolting hours on the long road,
But after Cloud Hill, Darvel,
Where will we sleep tonight?
Today is a day for sky
And running like children, mad with space –
Tears cut from our cheeks by the wind and gone.
I am light as a bird skull
Washed in fire, cold and smooth as leather.
In fever I lick the stars,
Bessie tethered close,
Dreaming her standing-up dreams.
He walks bloodied ahead of me
And will not turn.
More than half way, he’d promised me
We’d rest, say prayers, sleep in respectable beds.
Instead he’s bitten by this cold fury
To keep moving, to crawl across our map like a flea
Fastening to the pulse of its next meal.
He says: these high clouds pass over us only once.
Publication: The Spar Box, Vane Women, won a PBS Recommendation.
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