Loch Thom

1

Just for the sake of recovering

I walked backward from fifty-six

Quick years of age wanting to see,

And managed not to trip or stumble

To find Loch Thom and turned round

To see the stretch of my childhood

Before me. Here is the loch. The same

Long-beaked cry curls across

The heather-edges of the water held

Between the hills a boyhood’s walk

Up from Greenock. It is the morning.

And I am here with my mammy’s

Bramble jam scones in my pocket.

The Firth is miles and I have come

Back to find Loch Thom maybe

In this light does not recognise me.

This is a lonely freshwater loch.

No farms on the edge. Only

Heather grouse-moor stretching

Down to Greenock and One Hope

Street or stretching away across

Into the blue moors of Ayrshire.

2

And almost I am back again

Wading the heather down to the edge

To sit. The minnows go by in shoals

Like iron-filings in the shallows.

My mother is dead. My father is dead

And all the trout I used to know

Leaping from their sad rings are dead.

3

I drop my crumbs into the shallow

Weed for the minnows and pinheads.

You see that I will have to rise

And turn round and get back where

My running age will slow for a moment

To let me on. It is a colder

Stretch of water than I remember.

The curlew’s cry travelling still

Kills me fairly. In front of me

The grouse flurry and settle. GOBACK

GOBACK GOBACK FAREWELL LOCH THOM.