David Ross Linklater

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Acquiring Delicate Freedoms

On the hill I saw the fires working. 
Ran from my home 
to hook the sight in full, spectral bloom. 
Heat from shaking winds,
blistered sands,
the hill and her suicides of heather.
Stood open-mouthed
as night gnawed its million
orange teeth.  
Saw that the whole of parts 
can erupt, that God might not 
have alighted anywhere 
or that it all might destroy itself
just to feel real, and us only 
here to witness that,
make it bend a bit. 

Many came to watch. 
Some became particularly studied 
in the flames, 
in the big thing that had come to feast. 
Not an ordinary Tuesday at all.

A bairn, I was rewired, then,  
to the new, suffering morning.
Glass of the sea blessed 
and fragile, I took pleasure in the water
I had not taken before
and in the night, which was 
a new, fine linen. Woke
the next day for the first time
belonging not to hills
or fires or nights,
even to Gods
but to my own bones
pale and darling,
my disintegrating concepts.
Wearing the clothes
of new, strange freedoms.  

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DAVID ROSS LINKLATER is a poet from Easter Ross. He was shortlisted for 2020 Edwin Morgan award and his third pamphlet Scenes from a God Movie is out now with Speculative Books. He lives and writes in Glasgow. www.davidlinklaterpoetry.com