david-tollick
Scottish
Have been writing for over two years, inspired by Local Arts Association poetry/singer-songwriter open mic sessions in Dumfries. Much of my inspiration comes from the natural world and the countryside around where I live, in a small village a few miles from Lockerbie. I also love people watching, especially on my travels by bus, train and bicycle. You can also find me on Facebook
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
Apr 16, 2011
Apr 16, 2011 at 11:32 PM UTC
(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
Apr 1, 2011
Apr 1, 2011 at 11:20 AM UTC
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
Mar 28, 2011
Mar 28, 2011 at 11:29 AM UTC
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”
Mar 20, 2011
Mar 20, 2011 at 2:21 AM UTC
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!
Mar 18, 2011
Mar 18, 2011 at 2:21 PM UTC
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
Mar 12, 2011
Mar 12, 2011 at 8:48 AM UTC
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
Mar 12, 2011
Mar 12, 2011 at 8:48 AM UTC
Blind Spot
How lovely to see you again
You are just the excuse
I've been looking for
To leave the road
Crash through the fence
And come to rest
Off track, way off track
Blind spot, sun spot,
Hot spot, turn-me-on spot
Dazzle me, blind me
You seem pleased to find me too
You are just the excuse
How lovely to see you
You are just an excuse
Blind spot, my soft spot
Mar 12, 2011
Mar 12, 2011 at 8:47 AM UTC
Is it just me
Or is it just four bottles of beer
Or is it just the picky, pock, patchy
Thawed and re-frozen
Left-over snow
Or the starry sky
A hint of Northern Lights
With the beautiful s-bend of the river
Willow and alder as skeletons
Scribbled against the winter meadow
With river-washed flotsam
Caught along the fence-line
The big trout in midstream under the bridge
In daylight behind her rock
And why not still so now?
Or is it just peculiar -
That while to every horizon the stars fall to Earth
As secrets on countless tongues -
That the word on my lips
Is your name
Mar 4, 2011
Mar 4, 2011 at 10:39 AM UTC
careless that she is a soldier's daughter
this afternoon she is a dancer
Looby-Loo skipsy across the cool tiles
while outside the sun crushes the town
hardly enough of her
to fill her pinafore
feather, skelf, sunbeam in perfect time
to the tune in her head
she holds her audience's gaze
four chairs, a broom and the cat
she notices a moth caught in a web
the window squeaks in the heat
1000s of miles away
sand catches at his boots
his mind waltzes back
across his last patrol
trusting the instincts
which have carried him safely
through each patrol so far
dancing with his death
like some deadly tango
after the first few steps
there is no going back
just like having children
there is no going back
Mar 3, 2011
Mar 3, 2011 at 1:22 PM UTC