You carve your trade
Above your door
The chisel bright and keen
Looking for work
Like a collie dog
Mallet wagging
Weightless in your hand
Rounding the letters

The letters speak of rowan
Fetched from a'side
A mountain burn
Fed by snow-melt
Even in summer
Hot sun through thin air
Burnishing each day
The wild, burred grain

Adorned with marquetry anemones
Each petal in fine horn
Further etched with pewter
And you will love that sign
The thought of that sign
Even if you never carve a single letter
Nor ever hang it until
You have something to trade

(for Glynn)*

Singing breeze
Singing breeze
Carrying nothing
Kissed by sunlight
Carry my wishes
Scatter my troubles

Leave the grey highway
Slip through the forest
Birch and pine
Needle and catkin
Shutting the sky out
Speckles of sunlight

Evening sky
How many colours
How many colours
Woodsmoke and silence
Unsleeping river
Silence and river

Wanting to share this
Beautifully lonely
Only I saw it
Only I held it
Stop this stone rolling
Let the moss gather

Living as leaf-fall
Living as boulder
Keener than snowmelt
Fuller than August
Cradle of tree roots
Mantle of mountain

Granite horizon
Breezes will soothe you
Whispering breezes
Will you be listening
Do you hear singing
Do you hear forests

Maybe water runs uphill
From the ocean's bursting treasures
Of salts, silts, sands
Marshalling at the estuaries
Spawning rivers, as pioneers
Oozing into coastal plains
A brackish caravan rolling
Inland to new-found-land
Beyond the rule and will
Of the tide's spill where
Drought and dry spells
Sweep like wraiths
******* on thieving winds
Throwing heartless dusty curses
Picking off stragglers
In slacks and backwaters
Or caravanned through known channels
Paying taxes to the thick-rooted soil
For passage upstream
Past thirsting leaf and bough
Every mile hard-won
Til the watershed haven
Of bog and lochan
Corralled safely among peaks
There to farm the cloud and mist
And to see blossom, in good years
A deep harvest
Of cold, clean snow

You just don't notice
The wrinkles an' lines
She's covered them in fun
Coz her easy smile
Will her airbrush be
Until her race is run

Gold trainers
Worn with blue jeans
Are the icing on the cake
As she boogies
With her old man
With the bar-room in her wake

An' the dixie-band
Don't miss a beat
Black jeans, black shirts, deep south
'Cept the double-bass
On whose poker face
Someone's stuck a smiley mouth

And the clarinet
Awaits his cue
Eyes shut in swaying bliss
While Goldie,
She's gone freestyle
And the front-man gets a kiss

So the trombone slides
An' the susa-phones
Just as cool as a cu-cumber
And the 'Judges rocks
as the chorus rolls
“Your Age Is Just A Number”

Watching the April northerly
Blow the Spring away to sea from Galloway
Towards Ireland
The lee of the **** for shelter
Low sun warming your face

Massive frequent clouds, megalithic
Dull below to towering snow-white heaven
Their wind-driven gunmetal shadows rush out to sea
The bay, at distance, a breastplate of pewter
Beaten across with countless, tiny hammerings

With animal purpose a shape moves slowly,
Breaking the horizon heading for Man
The breeze, coltish, struggling to be gone
Headstrong with promise and challenge
A fine day for such a crossing!

The wind is stretching her fingers
Kneading the waves
Into darker, worried scuffs
As the sun teases her
With silver treasures, always distant, elusive
Thrown onto the sea
Through cracks in a sky
Whose slate-grey mood
Could be mistaken for malice
As creel-boats see to their lies
Off Flodigarry, in Trotternish

Your talk easily carries the mountains
flattening the blue hare
further into her scrape
ears down, nothing there

Only her breath moves
as the boulder-field
rings with your call
ice falling on rock

Beneath you, deer hug the ridge
your chatter will not irk them
until death takes them
then they will taste your beak

Men's careless leisurely ways
leave you their scrap
you will waste nothing
you will stay above them

You know what they lost
you know what they look for
you, and the hare, and the deer
you have it safe

Dropping into nothingness
your hidden shining eye
sees everything that moves
and all that is still

With the eagle you are fearless
it is not fear that will stop you
nine winters have set your mind
there is no going back