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Alan McClure Oct 2011
I have come to understand things
in a rational way.
Even love, that endless mystery,
can be broken down
into respect, reliance, trust and patience
With ample evidence available
for each category.

But a blast
from your long-ago eyes
destroys the shelves,
smashes the glass cases
and smothers the labels
in cryptic Pagan pictograms

I have no words,
only a feeling
warm and welcome
that something remains
forever, unexplained.
Alan McClure Oct 2011
It's fifteen years
since I let Jack fall.
I am unforgiven
by a wife who wasn't there,
who didn't see what happened
and who will never understand.

And nor will I, of course.
That slow-motion slip
from crested cliff to vanishing
replays before my desperate eyes
each night,
and each night I am as frozen
as on that wretched day.
A harmless walk gone awry
and a family forever shattered.

He was within my reach.
Another day I would have caught him,
effortlessly.
Another day I would have walked cliffside,
keeping him to the thrift-speckled verge,
soft and safe.
Another day we would have walked a woodland trail instead.

I don't know why that day
was the day I was distracted,
the day my reflex failed me.
I don't know why my brain misfired,
conscious enough to watch in horror
but not to propel me forward.
Sometimes we catch the cup as it topples,
sometimes we watch it spill to the floor.
Moments of blissful skill
followed by moments of dumb helplessness.

It was no cup that fell that day.

To her, though, there is no general flaw.
There is no explanation in biology,
no hormone or synapse to be blamed.
There is only me.  Her husband.
Jack's father.

There are no two sides to my coin, now.
There is only the man who let him fall.
She stays: she is dutiful.
But I could catch every falling cup,
remember to lock every door,
make never another mistake,
and he will still be dead
because his father was a careless man.

Ten years before Jack fell,
I,
a cautious man, untutored in love,
saw a beautiful girl
and inexplicably threw caution to the wind.
Another day I would have turned aside.
Another day I would have stammered my invitation,
lost my nerve.
But for that mysterious moment
There would have been no Jack,
and we would never have experienced
a limitless, all consuming love
which all the pain in the universe
can never staunch
or dim.
To the kind-hearted folks at HP - this is an imaginative piece, I'd hate you to think I had really suffered such a tragedy.
Alan McClure Sep 2011
Victoria Falls
with all its mighty battering roar
was merely background noise
as I wondered what Camilla was thinking of me.

Machu Picchu from the sun-gate at dawn?
I was distracted by Helen,
and whether she'd keep in touch
when she returned to Britain.

Debbie eclipsed the solar eclipse -
The outback rolling into premature darkness
spectacular, sure
but nothing to what she was doing to my heart.


But you and I
feel the simple Scottish lawn
beneath our four feet
together, complete.
Alan McClure Sep 2011
I am not wracked by doubts:
I am enlivened,
enthralled
and awakened by them.
Alan McClure Sep 2011
In long
September light
Knocktinkle viewpoint draws
elastic shadows over rocks
and minds

Buzzard
like a hyphen,
a golden-feathered pause
between these eyes and everything
they see

I have
no thoughts up here.
They stayed below, waiting
while I saw sunset stripe the hills
with gold

This land
tells tales to those
who have not lost the tongue
But I, a stranger, look with love
and guess

A glen
where witches danced
and weary hunters trod
tonight rolls peaceful down towards
the sea.
Alan McClure Sep 2011
I still think of you
when I hear a song that moves me
And wonder what it would follow
on the tape I wish I could make you.
This is the standing stone
on an emotional landscape
that has changed as fast as technology,
seen music shift from soulfood
to occasional backdrop
and solitary teenage bedrooms morph
to joyful family homes (thank God).

I wouldn't go back -
but here's a song, unexpected, blissful
which can't quite touch me as it should
Because I can't press 'record',
watch the reels go round
and imagine you listening
when the tape crosses the country
and fetches up at your front door.

No more padded envelopes
nor blotted biro liner notes;
no more declarations hidden in plain sight
in ninety minutes of love
I knew no other way to send.
Alan McClure Sep 2011
Folk with the real Scots,
guttural and glorious,
know me for the cushion-mouthed patsy I am

I can no more ape
that lyrical brilliance
than I can do a Grappeli on the fiddle
or tickle the keys Theloniously

And when I see
a lounge-room spaniel
howling feebly at the moon
frustrated wolf-blood
squirting through its scrawny veins

I know
exactly
how it feels.
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