Hometown
At some point in fairly recent history, the tobacco merchants became tired
of their Glasgow streets being as smoky as their business.
They chose a new place for their sprawling houses
in an uncanny stretch of land bordered by water and sky
furred over with pine trees
where the children thought there might be fairies.
Some two centuries later
the place bustled with all the associated industries of war;
the government traded in unease, built walls around their ugliest dreams
and the people heard the silver Tridents humming in their sleep, quiet death, waiting.
But still
there was water, and still it ran, on and on, until the end of the world.
In the houses, children grew, and got ready to leave;
if you stayed, the three lochs closed in and the black Kelpie emerged
and took you away into the cold Argyll night. They rode the rambling train-line
all the way to Glasgow; wondered at the hunger yawning where before
there had only been street-lights and quiet water, skimming stones at dusk.
Three, four, five. Swallowed by the silent Clyde.
But somehow they will not forget that
you don’t cross the pier carpark after dark. Some will never find
cause to go back, and spend their days in endless streets where
Scots pine never grew.
Some will hold the glens like a lover
in their mind, and years spent chasing love or money will find them
skimming down the Rest and Be Thankful back to what the merchants bought into;
sky, and air, and woods
where they remembered there were fairies.
Daisy Harris
Daisy Harris Poetry 