SHEILA Templeton makes something charmed and charming out of the commonplace in this pre-spring fragment from her collection, Tender Is the Night (Red Squirrel Press, £4).

A former winner of the McCash Prize for Scots Poetry, she writes here in English.

BORROWED BLOSSOM

Today

the gean tree

outside

my window

has snatched up

a fluttering

of old tissue

snarled it

on grey

bud-less branches;

and, clumsy at

first

with such need

for green life

is waving

impromptu blossom

not like a flag

but softly

making

her own spring.

gean=wild cherry