There is dignity and a hint of poignancy in this second sample from Jim Carruth’s new collection, Black Cart (Freight Books, £9.99), as the farmer and his son - who has chosen a professional life away from his farming heritage - cross paths in the early morning.
Jim Carruth is Glasgow’s poet laureate; he is a former winner of the McCash Scots Poetry Prize, was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship in 2009, and featured the following year in Oxford Poets 2010.
NOT EXACTLY SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
Not exactly ships, father,
that is not the nature of our paths
crossing the steep slope of Horsewood Road
though sometimes it rains so hard, so long,
I feel the River Gryffe could rise up to meet us,
carry us off across submerged fields.
~
No boatman, I wear a suit, walk
on worn soles that let in water
and you travel in that rusted Skoda
spluttering through its first climb of the day;
struggling as we do with the early starts:
the first bus, to a desk in a distant city;
the first cow, eager to be fed and milked.
~
Nor is it night, though few in this village
have risen to call this darkness morning –
they miss those moments of our passing,
a blast of the horn, a headlight flash, a wave,
Sometimes a window rolled down:
Get to work
Aye you too
and always your smile
staking its claim, remaining bright
in the ebb of streetlights, stars.
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