Poems

Tableau

Picture an early winter evening, dropping dark
along the front on dog-walkers and a lone figure
glancing up at last year's unlit Christmas lights
and through them catching sight of two lives briefly
more determined than the night's first stars:

an attic square of butter-coloured light
above the Clyde, one of those tall, seen-better-days
Victorian terraces that people Scotland, a student's
or a young professional's place full of potential, but as yet
just two chairs and an Ikea table minimally set

in the uncurtained window where one player,
seated, waits as the other comes downstage
to light a candle, darkening their vista of the spreading firth,
Helensburgh's jewels twinkling and the ferry
with its tired locals nosing out towards Dunoon.

For all you know they're still there three years on
in that high gabled room, that and their twenties
stretched ahead of them, pans cooling backstage somewhere
and an unmade bed. As one lifts a knife. As silently
those grey plastic snowmen swing.

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