Bride

My black witch came to my wedding.
She sipped from the punchbowl,
began to reel.
                                           Clumps of earth
and stone tumbled from her kilt
and fingernails, gathered
into green velvet moss.

She leapt over shoots of pine
spiky as antlers, scattered the guests
into skittish deer.
                                       The dance-floor
tilted, the chandelier
lost its hooks and flung itself
into the moon and stars.

It was her idea of a carriage.
We found ourselves walking down the beinn
towards the inn,
                                        the whisky
and the armchairs by the fire.
She scattered rose-petals over the bed,
lit the candles, left.

Reel

(The steps are  pre-determined)

Stand in sets, stiff minuet
cross hands, turn your partner
you imagined how it would be

Close up, two step
pas de bas in your mother’s pumps
pulled from the wardrobe

Heel toe, hold hands with him
dress up, gay gordon’s waltz
your chest close to his

Figure of eight weaves three
of you into baskets of arches
and circles, loose hands

Cast off, you pair with old tartan
he’s gone with a stripped willow
of a lass, turn your partner

Reel of the Fifty-First time
you’ve cried, tripped and fallen
St Bernard’s waltz a rescue of sorts

Slow Strathspey, you understand
the dance is made of loose hands
of arms and feet close, apart

Grand Chain of flying
kilts, black velvet, this is how it is
bow to the partner you finish with.

R. Duncan

Please notice the way the lines of the bare beech trees
deepen and warp the incomprehensible space
of the cricket pitch, as you lie flat, moored
to the grass under the fishscale clouds which stretch
and push the wavering line of mountains formed
by glaciers,
                  as your heart retreats from the climb
to the ledge, where your untied voice would lift
turning with the stems of the last roses.

Please notice how you tumble and slip on the brae,
as if some god had made its slope from the river
long and straight with the metal toys of angles —
as if you could have drawn it, let your pen
dance the agile river-bends,
                                                 if you lifted your eyes
from your shoe-laces, towards the boulders
forged in ice, and painted the shivering water.

Please notice the shout from the rugby pitch that runs
through the arches and fir trees to the door of the library
where you linger, down through the pages of the book
that you turn as the sentences of dreams run through
your fingers, that would pull you back into wanting,
back into the game,
                                        if you would close the vision
on the shelf to let it sleep, not noticing its slip
out of sight behind the walls and into the dust.

Please notice how the scent of willow and white cotton
rises from the elderly floorboards, up to the line
of boards which stretches back for a century,
tracing the gilding of names that fade in decades,
no longer gleaming,
                                        dulled from adolescence
into nothingness, as if a struck match fell to the ground,
extinguished — please notice my name.