For the love of word - pc-p21

postcard: Edinburgh
poem: Alistair Reed (2008) - Scotland

It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet,
when larks rose on long thin strings of singing
and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.
Greenness entered the body. The grasses
shivered with presences, and sunlight
stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.
Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,
the woman from the fish-shop. 'What a day it is!'
cried I, like a sunstruck madman.
And what did she have to say for it?
Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves
as she spoke with their ancient misery:
'We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it!'

I found the postcard some years ago in a charity shop and bought it, as the picture reminds me of Arthur's Seat, a hill I dearly love.

I've been browsing the pages of the Scottish Poetry Library again this week - partly because it's Book Week Scotland - and that is where I found today's poem. It went to a friend who's originally from Italy, has lived in Scotland for more than ten years, loves it, yet somehow sometimes struggles with the weather - I can't imagine why.

NaPoWriMo - my version of it; sending a postcard-poem each day of November. Here is the how.