Star-crossed

 

Where the cranes divide the sky 

Under a muted dawn

We sit under sandstone pillars 

Inscribed with time and salt winds.

 

Your liquid shadow spills out across the dock 

As you spin a yarn from the single stars 

That pick out a path across the Forth. 

 

You fight an urge to turn giant 

And push those cable drums seaward, 

To watch them unroll their cargo in furls of snakes.

 

I listen and long to hold you by the kissing trees 

Under a hawthorn halo of lace, 

As rooks peel away from their roosts

And wheel across fields spiked by plough and gold.