A wagtail’s tail measuring grain
by grain salt to judge from its St
Vitus’ dance seesawing over
the driveway and on down the hill
to the park fitful yet careful
completing one circuit of the
estate and starting another
it keeps on from morning till night
as to the dawn-numb body the
circulatory system these
slip-roads to the a96
the dark car dashboard fruit-machines
to life and the wakeful fireflies
of drive-time wink each to the next
until cresting the hill we find
unwrapped by first light tower blocks
part of an oilrig a giant’s
yo-yo on the roundabout by
the turn for the airport traffic
sluggish today as the price of
a barrel of North Sea crude the
talk of little else for offshore
workers lighting up anent the
girders cabins portaloos pipes
exoskeletons of venture
capital in the unfinished
business park seek tax breaks ‘Invest’
screams Alex Ferguson red-faced
from a billboard quick flows the Don
and deep lies the coastal shelf of
waiting untapped revenue streams
implacable Petropolis
where from the car window should I
seek your softer edges rabbits
grazing on the traffic islands
a deer at the edge of the woods
still uncleared for the new estates
snout cocked by the electric fence
pulsing in time to its heartbeat
lit like Orthodox shrines the rigs
of passing HGVs honour
a god whose ichor runs black god
whose heavy-breathing burn-off flares
like St Elmo’s fire in the night
out where the Piper Alpha slick
washed and refluxed round dead seabirds
astray on the outer suburbs’
works floor of greenbelt-destruction
faceless strolls a schoolboy past the
sandpit of balletic diggers
and forklifts and compels amid
their bustle my gaze sole smudge on
the move not screaming hi-vis lime
but bleak and sorry human grey