our city with your seven hills and heavens

Bit of a dearth of walking-blips recently … but; a significant walking-trip is planned for mid-October to the far North-West corner of Scotland, so watch this space ;-)

Meantime, it’s National Poetry Day very soon - on Thursday 8th October; so I’m going to blip the series of eight cards that the Scottish Poetry Library has produced – between Wednesday 30th September and Wednesday 7th October.

On the 8th, I’ll blip my very favourite poem about this year’s theme: light.
It’s not one of the series of eight!

For today – here another Scottish Poetry Library–related poem; from a recent completion they ran … I 'chose/voted for' Valerie Gillies’ “To Edinburgh”:

 
To Edinburgh

Stone above storms, you rear upon the ridge:
we live on your back, its crag-and-tail,

spires and tenements stacked on your spine,
the castle and the palace linked by one rope.

A spatchcock town, the ribcage split open
like a skellie, a kipper, a guttit haddie.

We wander through your windy mazes,
all our voices are flags on the high street.

From the sky’s edge to the grey firth
we are the city, you are within us.

Each crooked close and wynd is a busy cut
on the crowded mile that takes us home

in eden Edinburgh, centred on the rock,
our city with your seven hills and heavens.

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Valerie Gillies (1948 - )

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