Thirty Hours Near The Western Isles

Thirty Hours Near

The Western Isles

         Back, overwhelmed by the work armada
         looming over future's space denied eye:
         was it only last week I ran to the north?
Searching in Stratford, a plastic coated graveyard,
and some drugged hightech shopping centre
closer to Birmingham's fumy, beer dead mass;
bouncing into service stations for conscious keeping coffee,
then caught in Glasgow's sudden southern snare,
trapped until the passive traffic rose,
looking for asylum in a late night bed,
rising to avoid a Scottish rat hour rush,
all to run from caffeine, and dominating work.

         The Style Council sing revolutionary sugar
         to a glass of Irish
         while I recall my freedom placebo,
smelling Scotland's clean crowdless breath,
the wood surrounded water tumble
singing some theatre's between-Act gossip,
a home counties riverbank amongst increasing hills,
mist on cow covered meadows before stretched and pulling cliffs;
the mountain has grown out of its grass clothes
sheltering spring rained villages lying in for autumn.

         A rush eaten raw Indian meal, a
         chilli itch that grows sharper with soothing
         as I await the third day of forty -
and the land melted down for Oban.
From Fort William another road shouts its vigour
up over a soft Austrian lake into a memory scar
with only one way to go between glacial walls
digging deeper and deeper into geological memories
until a rock is rounded, a smooth sea appears,
the shadow threat is past, the future is good:
but for black castles waiting in the water.

A slash of "Hack", a pogo on the keyboard
part exchanging one frustration for another:
and the worn down hills, isolated with age,
uncles of bladed rocks round finger pools at the Porthcawl coast;
on to thin roads through test tube forests of matchwood trees;
then peat sleeping flat between pensioned hills
due for their telegram from the solar queen:
just imagine what the Whisky the water from these burns might be.

Greasy, vegetarian burgers fried to a little hunger
and the hope of hysterical snooker:
and a north coast estuary, bleak,
empty with black bright evening sun.
On, through land growing younger,
past bitter attempts to poison the future.
Then south, south, south to London,
and fretful, nervous, running, home.

The Setting