PIONEER

PIONEER

Don Paterson                    

It’s here I would have come to pass away

the final hour before the boat’s departure;

the bluff side of the Law, between the harbour

and the dark, cetacean barrow of Balgay.

Twin trains of headlights inched across the river-

the homebound day-shift - trail-blazing cars\like angels on the starry escalator

of the bridge’s tapering, foreshortened spar.

I tried to see it as a burning lance

angling for the slicked, black shoals of Fife

or a bowsprit, swung and steeved against the south

to help ride out her hellish afterlife:

the stubborn, rammish sap still on my hands,

the taste of her, like a coin laid in my mouth.







Description: Screwed to a broken tree stump atop an overgrown hillock at the side of Dudhope Garden Steps. Geotag co-ords: 56.464980, -2.991526
Date: 08.04.14