Status Updates From A Year of Scottish Poems

may 16 - “But I can hear you,
just,
As sailors hear mermaids sing
On the edge of the horizon.”

may 15 - “walking by the waters down where an honest river shakes hands with the sea”

may 14 - “All that was good, all that was fair, All that was me is gone.”

may 13 - “Star of love's soft interviews, Parted lovers on thee muse;
Their remembrancer in Heaven Of thrilling vows thou art,
Too delicious to be riven
By absence from the heart.”

may 12 - “To love you needs more detail than the Book of Kells”

may 11 - “Dark brown is the river, Golden is the sand. It flows along for ever, With trees on either hand.”

may 10 - “Often has your minstrelsy
Soothed the pangs of misery, Winging rapid thoughts away To realms on high.”

may 9 - “The old ways change in the turning, turning light, Taking and giving life to life from life.”

may 8 - “The wee birdies sing, and the wild flowers spring, While in sunshine the waters are sleeping
But the broken heart it kens nae second spring again, Tho’ the waefu’ may cease free their greetin’.”

may 7 - “A wandering particle captured one of them, and the two that were left made day and night, and left and right, and right and wrong, and black and white, and off and on, but things were never quite the same, and two will always yearn for three.”

may 6 - “For vanishing within my thought, And stealing back to view,
Earth mingled so with heaven, they wrought
One universe from two.”

may 5 - “Hers was the only house where I've lain at night in the absolute darkness of a box bed, listening to crickets being friendly.”

may 4 - “The deer in the den, Sail drink in the clearest fountain.”

may 3 - “I wish you years that shape, that form, and a pond in a Sunday, urban garden”

may 2 - “trembling of the little waves
dancing of the little waves
pausing of the little waves
slanting of the little waves”

may 1 - “I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.”

apr 30 - “We were young, we were anxious to clutch at whatever proof fitted. Still, humility liberates; when it comes to matters of truth we're not picky.”

apr 29 - “Where the blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings plentiest be, That's the way for Billy and me.”

apr - “Up wi the flowers o' Scotland, The emblem o' the free, Their guardians for a thousand years,
Their guardians still we'll be.”

apr 27 - “So may the mind achieve,
Toiling, no vision of the infinite, But a vast, dark and inscrutable sense Of its own terror, its own glory and power.”

apr 26 - “Wee Davie Daylicht noo has closed his e'e. In amang the rosy clouds, far ayont the sea.”

apr 25 - “Now it is late. The tracks leading home are steep, The stars and landmarks in your country are strange.”

apr 24 - “Ah, surely I must go!
For there the tides, moon-haunted, ebb and flow;
And there the seaboard murmurs resonant;
The waves their interwoven fugue repeat
And brooding surges beat
A slow, melodious, continual chant.”

apr 23 - “Will ye no come back again?
Better lo'ed ye canna be,
Will ye no come back again?”