Edinburgh 2/7/16

15jul14 059Wildflowers of the street-side:
plantain between paving slabs and honesty
– yes – lunaria annua rooted in the sludge
under tenement walls, also hawksbit,

daisies, and some lanky kind of brassica –
what do they think this is, the countryside?
But jeez, the bins! Thae larus argentatus
nesting on the builders’ merchant’s roof

have been raiding again: takeaways strewn
then wind-blown, then rained on, this being July….
We’d be ‘Greece without the sunshine’

shrieks the Daily Mail. Aye, we’re so scared.
From someone’s window the radio plays:
‘a second Indyref would let us ditch the lot of them.’

Comments (4)

Leave a Reply to nick Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

  1. nick says:

    nice movement from the particular to the general…thanks

  2. Robin Kinross says:

    You need to say who wrote this beautiful poem.

    1. Thanks Robin, it’s by Kathleen Jamie

  3. Tam Black says:

    braw and amusing poem, thanks Kathleen

Help keep our journalism independent

We don’t take any advertising, we don’t hide behind a pay wall and we don’t keep harassing you for crowd-funding. We’re entirely dependent on our readers to support us.

Subscribe to regular bella in your inbox

Don’t miss a single article. Enter your email address on our subscribe page by clicking the button below. It is completely free and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.