Magpie
A magpie thinks
in black and white

so that when it can't find a twig
for its nesting purpose
it will jumpfly into a leafless tree
and grasp the end of a branch

and with a shiny black
musselshell beak
start to pull
and pull
and pull.

Girl at a window
Windwhirling thoughts break through the glass
and take flight beyond the window

and freedom circles through the air
in a flashflap of whitened feathers

but each wingbeat glide takes it further away
past greyblack fields and shadowed copses

to a shining white horizon line
that divides me from my self

untouchable, unreachable
like my reflection in the pane.

Distillery Clouds
A coldwhite Camlachie sun
makes the distillery steam black.
High flats behind its tall, thin chimney -
a fag poking out of a proffered packet

at a party
or a wake.

There's a blue-sky, heat-shimmering gap
where the stack stops and the clouds start
a swirling testament to those moments
when a thing transforms itself

water to whisky
gas to liquid

and condenses in tiny droplets
being blown off to the east
to fall maybe
like tears by an Airdrie graveside.

Confession
I stretched to hear your muffled Latin
from behind the sieved-off screen
absolving me of saying cunt
and pilfering my gran's biscuits.

I thought you had an intercom in there -
that my usual sentence of
oneourfatherfivehailmarys
had been radioed from heaven.

But it was you who set the tariff
that sent my conscience through her twin tub
for a Saturday-long scrubbing
spun out
red raw
lifted from on-high
with thick wooden tongs.

I can mind your gluttony
your ruddy isolation
your love of other folk's brandy
that arrogance of never knocking

but I can mind a day too
when an early summer sun
pulsed through diamond windows
illuminating
your gold and emerald chasuble

a silent solemn sitting
with the first taste
of raw pasta salvation
on my tongue

a white sash around me
and the girls in their
ice-cream dresses

and I have to confess

I thought there was a power
in your presence.

Sunday Fantasies
With a bellyful of butcher meat
watch Walden on Weekend World
sticking SS20s over central Europe
warheads slanted to the sky.

Be ready to protect and survive
behind the futuristic shimmer
of your gran's orange curtains
and the creambrown metal

of her dusted venetian blinds.
Look up at the telephone pole
over the road at the junction
of Bruce and Wallace Street -

there's an iron spear
that in the war
will Bond-like peel apart
and fire off interceptors

making your village strategic
noted
somewhere
sometime.