On the Leith Bus​ 

tiredness wears loose trousers
uncombed hair
a bagged bread roll
backpacks and plastic
black tea, potato.
 
I sit cocooned as the
stops come and go
remember a date night
my child’s first birthday
the Black Cuillin on Skye
finger foods for the deceased
 
remember that evening in Dunkeld
when the musician stopped playing his fiddle
long enough to walk
the blind woman home.

Waiting

​She was waiting for the world
to bend into the durable arms of children
the fluid nature of love
that blesses as it spends,
wears its mock rabbit slippers
into the handgrenaded places.

But her mother had already passed on
into the bed of yellow asters
into the blue blue eyes
of the cone flowers
that spring up everywhere
where lament names them
and silence
admonishes them to stay.