STEWART Conn, Edinburgh's first Makar and one of Scotland's most distinguished present-day poets, has a major volume, The Touch of Time:

New and Selected Poems, due to published later this month (Bloodaxe Books, £12). Here, as a little foretaste, is one of the new pieces in his collection. The canine joie de vivre is a cheery image for a Monday morning!

OFF THE LEASH

Three dogs come bounding down Porty prom,

twisting and cavorting as they leap the barrier

and go splashing along the dowdy tide-line,

their balletic exertions suspended in air. One

especially, a black and white collie, shows such

superabundance of spirit I am rooted to the spot

as it comes loping and pirouetting towards me,

radiating catherine-wheels of spray. Only as they

go tumbling and somersaulting past do I take in

that the collie, whose explosiveness and defiance

of gravity so caught my eye, has one foreleg

missing, which if anything appears to enhance

its exuberance as it heads, twisting and loping

(not to forget, of course, cavorting and bounding)

back up the prom, the way it came, the least trace

of deformity banished by its spirit and grace.