Above Stirling

on a rocky crag of a sheep pasture --
the evening sky still typical Scotland,
light and dark, cloud and sun contending --

as if we could just step out of one world
into another --
                       rays of sunlight streaming
from behind grey clouds onto the city curled
cosily around the loops of Forth and nestled
between the castle and the Wallace monument --

but not on you and me, arms round each
others' waists, on the rim, in the midst
of green fern that looks like a bishop's
crook when young --
                                 the cold wind fluttering
our light jackets, streaming our hair,

the fiddlehead fern, shivering with us
in the wind, vibrating to the same tune,
to the fierce, piercing, high pitched music
on the edge.

Skylark

a small speck above, a ways above us,
the crags, the hillside covered with miles
of fiddlehead fern covering thousands
of wild rabbit holes,
                               riding the gusts
of wind, your little peeps and tweeps,
your high squeaking, bubbling champagne
song descends like fine mist, seeps
into the pores of the rocks, the ferns,
the rabbits, and us,
                             like fine wine
going down slowly,
                              as delicate as
the late evening light from the head
of sun not quite out from behind
a vaguely human cloud,
lit up from within,
glowing on all edges.

James Court: Off the Royal Mile

East Entry:

a close, a narrow path
between Medieval stone

buildings, a passage to
the Jolly Judge Tavern,

fresh salmon, lamb stew, etc.,
cooking aromas ... like

the King's venison or wild
boar, perhaps, turning

slowly on a spit, sizzling
over an open fire.

West Entry:

next close up, parallel
to the east, barely wide enough
to walk through, not that easy
to get past the black Hefty bags
filled with garbage, leaning against
the ancient medieval stone

and the thick wires with grey
painted insulation leading to black
rectangular electricity boxes, with just
a glimpse of green -- the trees in the park
on the other side,
                           and further in,
recent rain water drip, drip, dripping
from the hand chiselled stone -- pipes
and more pipes, thicker pipes painted
that same depressing grey,

the plumbing poor King James
never had,

                 and the slight stench
of sewerage, dead carrion, the whiff
of witches burning,

which he did.

The Ewe in Winter

in Scotland, huddled with her lamb
in her windbreak in the lee side

of a windswept crag at night, bundled
in their recently, too recently sheared

wool coats, feeling at least the mother-
child connection, each others warmth,

drowsing in fits and starts -- awakened
off and on by the persistent

shock of cold,

                         while below, trapped

with the heat beneath so many
colored tiles -- neat patterns

so far below, sitting, wrapped
in bright wool scarves, sipping

cognac in cozy libraries, browsing
through pastoral lore,
                                 exists
a flock of shepherds.

The Ram in the Road

blocking our drive up the winding narrow
one lane road to the pub at Sherrifmuir
(the site of the last stand of a clan
that died to a man in a lost cause)
is impassive --
                       impressive;

he watches me climb with my camera
awkwardly out of the rented car, then
casually strolls off the pavement,
not that deep into pasture, and stands
at lens level, a tad higher than the road
with perfect background scenery -- hills
and crags rolling away toward infinity --

and raises, tilts upward his majestic,
dignified head, posing calm, serene, above
and beyond the clans' clanging of swords,

claiming his place in the scrapbook,
or, if you prefer, in the great album
of the world.

Information about Giverney

gleaned from a conversation struck up
with a stranger near the mound above
the National Gallery in Edinburgh --

they replant, I hear, the Gardens
in Giverney every year,
                                    the poppies,
irises, etc. -- they dig up all the beds,
and the sleeping beauty -- the royal purple,
the reds, the unnameable fireworks colors
kissed by spring and summer sunlight -- rises,
explodes anew every year --
                                            the corridors
roped off, the tourists allowed only
a perpindicular view, must take all photos
at right angles -- not quite what
the brochure promised,
                                     but surprise --
back home their poems and pictures turn out
much better than expected, more focussed,
more intense than the experience, itself, and

no surprise --
so much less than Monet.

From the Loch Floor

looking up at the patch of lime green
algae with occasional orange and yellow
fallen leaves -- circles, hexagons, odd

shapes pushed together by the light
current, the slight wind -- molded together
into a mosaic, a magic stained tile ceiling

that changes color when the sun shines through,
the mosaic rippling, shifting cloud shapes
on the surface -- first a fish, then a missile,

then a man with a flat head and a stump
of a right arm, a man disected by surprise,
by two ducks swimming through the center --

his severed head, his surgically removed
lower extremities floating away calmly,
naturally, one after the other.

Wimbrel

thin, sleek, brown and white
flecked, foot long,

aristocratic
cousin of

the common crow, your
signature

"aw, aw," your course and
only song -- chalk

on blackboard notes, a
sharp two edged

refrain -- spilling from
your down turned

predatory beak.

The Station Hotel

Edinburgh, 6:13 am after our last night
in Scotland -- relaxed on top of the covers,

with glasses off and looking through
the invisible grime of the fourth floor

window at the drunken dials of two clocks
atop the Balmoral Hotel -- a peeping tower,

meeting my benign, fuzzy, aftermath gaze --
his dirty white eyes in a blurry brown

medieval stone face -- eyes matching
the ashen, hangover slate color

of the would-be-dawn sky.

Over Airthrey Castle

and the golf course, the large 10:30
moon between dark clouds -- wisps of cloud
like locks of greying hair blown over
the tingling full round orange face

reflecting the warmth, the rays of late
sunset beyond our horizon -- the sharp edge
of fate, the top cloud descends slowly,
naturally until only a smile -- then only

a sliver is left and the cold wind stirs --
the trees' shadows darken, the lid closes,
the cloud guillotine falls, and the moon head
disappears in the dark basket below --

now, as we turn back to our narrow room,
we kiss and hold each other close.

Fishmarket Close

walking back to the hotel in fading 10:30 pm
summer Edinburgh light -- walking parallel to,
if somewhat below the Royal Mile -- looking
up the close, the narrow medieval stone alleyway,
at a scruffy young man sitting just this side
of the halfway house, not that far up the dirty
stone steps, playing his Irish whistle,

his cap with a few meager coins
on the bleak stone before him --

a young man with stubble on his chin,
a hustler's quick smile, who sees me writing
in my notebook, "come up and chat" he says ...

not Irish himself -- from the north of England
and living in London -- his luggage is in a locker
at the bus station -- planning to hitchhike
back tomorrow --
                             he'll sleep outside
again tonight "good thing it's warm,"
he says, pulling a "Regal" cigarette
out of a crumpled package,

"I like to talk to people, find out
where they come from. I like to
what you call 'communicate'," he says, . . .

and playing for the three slightly drunk
young men who appear mysteriously, like genies
out of the mouth of an old urn, appear and
unsteadily descend the damp medieval steps,

the men weaving like cobras, dancing
to his lively, lilting tune. . . .

'til the sound of glass shattering breaks
the spell; the view darkens; we are in a late
twentieth-century city of random violence,
of fragments, of shards and splinters scattered
on dark beer, urine, and blood stained stone
with night coming on --
                                    night that
neither the tilt of this spinning earth,
the thin high pitched notes of the tin whistle,
nor all the charms of music and song
can hold off for long.

Walking the Darn Road

that follows the Allan Water upstream,
thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson
over 100 years ago walking this trail

that has been in use since Roman times,
walking the same different trail that
is included in Kidnapped, pausing --

perhaps somewhere near here, near the
abandoned mining shaft, the origin,
of Ben Gunn's cave in Treasure Island --

and watching the same different water
splash in curls over rocks, listening
to the same different music that seeped

its way into the Child's Garden of Verses,
pausing myself, sitting on my poncho
on a rock above the musical waters,

thinking of the same different verses
I read to my children 25-30 yrs ago
and now read to my first grandchild

and also, I imagine, to my second who
will be born and I will fly to visit
in California before I get a chance to

work these notes into a poem -- sitting
here two miles downstream from Dunblane,
from the schoolyard where the teacher,

the 17 children, and the man who
insisted he was not a pervert died,
downstream from the debris, the dead,

the parents of the dead, downwind
from the debris of the PAN-AM flight
over Lockerbie and TWA flight 800

off Long Island -- thinking of the small
global village, with all those parents
with children the same different age.

Alexander and Bucephalus

A statue just off the Royal Mile,
before the Edinburgh city chambers,
presented by the subscribers, 1884 --

Bucephalus is rearing on his hind legs,
head tilted upward and to the left,
eyes wild, rebelling -- as if repelled

by the touch on his near flank
of Alexander the Great, the man
who would be God, the son of Amon-Ra,

with robes flowing over the bent knee,
and strong muscular right arm held back,
poised as if to throw a discus further

than any man the world has ever known,
or smite the satrap Bessus, the historian
Callisthenes, the innocent father

of a conspiritor, or, if he dared,
his own untamed horse.

The Grey Horse

on the bright sunlit green hillside, his
hind legs higher than his front, his eyes
the same level as his tail -- a staight
line -- his tail, his eyes, mine on

the Darn Road below, my human mind
thinking of him chewing the buttercups,
amid the pink and white clover, savoring
the taste of mini-daisies, and violets --

the tiniest, even smaller than the daisies,
violets with the thinest faint yellow veins
branching out from the center -- veins
like grains in the bottom of a cup,

in which we read the future or the past
or the present which contains them all.