Published in the Herald!

Dumfries & Galloway poets have been filling the Poem of the Day slot at The Herald this month.
First up was Hugh Bryden on 30 July, with his poem, Shaving.

Shaving

Its ma faither in the mornin’ greets mi
Razor in hand wi a smile he meets mi
An ah mind whin as a wee laddie there
Ah watcht him scrapin awa the hair
Mirrored the faces that he pu’ed
Learnt the skin-taut flexin move
Longed fur the day whin ah would
Shave masel jist as smooth


Ma Faither watcht me draw first blood
cutting the ties o’ childhood
Noo it’s the act that ties us the gither
Faither an’son reflecting each ither
in the actions of a daily chore
that each day draws us present an’past
closer,tighter - and more-
tae be the same face in the glass.

Then came Mary Smith, whose poem Lost in Translation, was published on 31 July:

Lost in translation
Once, people spoke their maps.
Everyone knew where lay
rough moorland of the perilous region,
the hill of the eagle,
mountain of awesome grandeur.

Once, people were wary of the crag
of the storm-swept range, made pilgrimage to
the hill of the memorial pile or that other,
above the hollow of the warrior’s tomb

Once, people spoke their land
and what it meant to them,
before strangers, with inflexible tongues,
bringing pen and parchment, plotted

names which whisper only an echo
of what they once were:
Palgowan, Benyellery, Mulwharchar,
Craigmasheenie, Pinbreck,
Corrafeckloch.

And then on 12 August Hugh Macmillan's poem Lost Garden:

The Lost Garden

There’s a garden in the heart of the school,
lost under the lidless gaze
of a hundred empty windows.
A quadrangle it would have been,
‘the Cherry Tree Quadrangle’,
now two walls are lined by skips,
broken brick, benches rotting in the sun.
Just here though, years of tinkering by children
too green fingered for exams have spawned
a thumbnail patch of feral orient.
In a daze of heat, palms and fronds
loll from fat pots. Trellis dry as tinder sags
with acer and bamboo. Ivy tongues stone
and the little plaques remembering the dead.
Below bleeding willow, a map of the world
fades, seismic weeds splitting continents
and seas, and cherry blossom is everywhere,
like the tender hint of wasted time.

Congratulations all!