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.
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