HELEN B Cruickshank's concern for a friend (in low spirits or poor health?) offers not just sympathy but a lovely evocation of a tardy Scottish spring.

The piece comes from her Collected Poems (Reprographia, 1971).

FOR ONE IN TROUBLE IN SPRINGTIME

I would have you look at growing hedges

To see the beads of green before they break,

Ebony blackthorn with its pearly silver

Making the lanes cobwebby with its lace.

I would have you watch the wanton sparrows

Flutter their wings in love's absurd conceits,

Proclaiming laggard spring is surely coming

Tho' snow-wreaths muffle still the dry-stane dykes.

I would have you look at furrowed ploughlands

Flashing with seagulls diving for their food,

The old eternal round that leads to harvest

When fields now bare will stand in golden stook.

I would have you listen in the evenings

To gaiety of Mozart, strains of Bach,

Knowing that complex fugues of stubborn problems

Will work out to perfection at the last.

I would have you rid your blood of toxins

Cleansing your mind of hurts, remote or near,

Pray that each day will be a new beginning,

So may you soon be well again, my dear.