Seven Poems

Aimed at the Thrower

On the other side of the globe
walking where the day
begins, I leaned against the wind
and under a sun-warped Samoan adobe
listened to that soft roar
when the swell turns back, stunned
to be on a beach that was molten glass.
Then I noticed the door

opening in a stone, and I swore

I was back in Scotland,
getting real, pushed out to the edge of my life
by the curved beach at Whalsay
and the grain of sand
that had escaped a landscape harder than bone.
I cradled one, weighing it in my palm,
...