AN autumnal tableau from Sheila Templeton's new pamphlet, Tender is the North (Red Squirrel Press, £4).

The author is a past winner of the McCash Scots Poetry Prize but here writes in English.

LIGHTEN UP

Rooms are yellow lighting

the frosty smoking dusk

floating their lives to me

from across the road.

I sit in my sky window

exulting. And wondering

what to say to that voice

my father, agitating

to close the curtains

clash the rings

along their pole, cutting

us off from anything

we might have sent

zinging into the dark.

You've a light on.

It's a wail now.

He never could stand

the idea of folk looking in.

So I take his hand

and we sit a little

back from the window.

Sky life takes time.