EVERYTHING CRYING, EVERYTHING SAD
>
At the back door with a cigarette and old climbing frames,
old moss-covered petrol pumps in the head.
The party inside cannot be got at.
>
Night has a way of skinning its animals.
Each memory could be a pair of strong arms
pulling water up from the well.
>
A fire once burned so brightly
each corner of the room was illuminated,
precious kindling fed in.
>
The back room had many mysteries.
In farm sheds, with shafts of splintered light,
hay bales were strongholds for little people.
>
In hallowed fields, horses ran over the heart’s
wonderful sceneries.
Harvest came. Trailers would spill their grain.
>
And the old house is nothing but eggs,
windows shut with a quiet hand.
Wee dead birdies stuck in the air space.
>
Waves have been scattering the stones.
Truthfully, the ocean is a bad dream
waking up against the shore again and again.
>
What a world.
>
Where did the striped deck chairs go?
The paddling pool? Smoke-grey tractor?
The greenhouse ripe with tomatoes?
>
It all becomes ritual, an offering to the ancients
>
Looking up at Orion’s belt,
the tailless cat brought home in a puffy jacket,
something is perfectly out of reach.
>
At the back door, with the cigarette down there,
moss-covered pumps and a party inside
that cannot be got at.
David Linklater is a poet from Balintore, Easter Ross. His poems have appeared in Gutter, Glasgow Review of Books, IS&T and Abridged, amongst others. His pamphlet ‘Black Box’was published with Speculative Books in 2018. He lives and writes in Glasgow. Twitter: @DavidRossLinkla
Yes, I remember those moments.
I like the way the poem weaves around a subtext so palpable,
that you can almost taste it.