Poetry: Getting Away from the Overtalker in Iona Hostel

 

Published in Scottish Writers Centre chapbook 'Land and Sea', Spring 2020.

Getting Away from the Overtalker in Iona Hostel

Freezing sward scours my feet
morning air cools my tea 
in the too thick mug far too quickly.

Big bare sun lifting over Mull glares my eyes
burns the starlings’ chatter to sound-silhouettes 
raises the fenceline to a diatribe.

And the geese roughly tell it how it REALLY is
and a single brilliant gannet courses the horizon
and the whole while skylarks are cooking up the blue

and I love, just love, how lapwings change their minds in mid air.