Thanks to the Scottish Book Trust, Kathryn Welch has been able to place my poetry road signs in her community garden and people make their own

from the title of my current play, Though This Be Madness and the poem, ‘Cusp’:

Cusp

see one or two wash up on Kooljaman at dusk

dune pale

bewildered

renting the shore

clutching a terry-towelling corner

whisked hair bent toward mercury sand

tracing the tail end of a neep tide

quietly foraging for something whole

in tide-chipped curls of home

trawling for perfection

to nestle in a palm

free from panic

 

depressing

tyres to force

a way through

a forgiving

sand, deeply

resilient

 

Land Cruiser parked hushed and inappropriate

 

we dig our heels into a photograph

squint to etch this dusk into memory

peeling layers of rust, ochre, and bone dust

from an unlikely blue – blinking beauty in the face

stumbling, grateful, captivated