The Sage of Penicuik

Back in Edinburgh after a year away. The charity shops of Stockbridge in a generous mood. We found this framed large scale map of Penicuik. The P’s dad spent a large part of his childhood there and he and J bought their first house on Peebles Road for £1500.

I found it hard to sleep later and wrote this


I’ve been away in foreign climes
And yet when I crossed Inverleith Park
From south to north
And the clear light was fading
In muted yellows and blues
In the west
I thought I could hear the surf on the wind
And that I could smell just the iodiney exhalations
Of wrack upon a stony shore.
The Oystercatchers piped across the sky
Their playing fields encroached
And bounded in by ceaseless change.
And yet I thought I could feel
The silent, moonlit expanse of moor and mountain
Machair and straggling forest
And hear the wind blowing across the reedy hollows of the Flow Country:
Our swiftly shifting earth
And the restless ocean
Pushing round the isles.
I dragged out my steps
Up the slight incline,
The darkness rushing in
And I briefly held that place within me.