Glasgow’s official poet Jim Carruth grew up on his family’s farm near Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, and his poetry is deeply engaged in that pastoral inheritance. Here is the opening poem from his new collection Black Cart (Freight Books, £9.99).

Homecoming

As I drive, you dream on in the back seat

unaware that motorways have narrowed to lanes,

safe in the guiltless sleep only children can manage.

My thoughts are with what is forgotten.

Breeds and crosses have become

cows and sheep in nursery books.

Strains of rye grass are broad-brushed fields:

Greens and yellows merged at speed.

I want to learn again the art of careful detail.

A wood pigeon’s soft calling

from Scots pines at Harelaw,

a fox on the skyline returning home,

an early morning tractor ploughing for barley.

I smell the damson above the diesel,

I taste the earth.

By the time we cross over the Locher Bridge

my feet on the pedals are paddling in frog spawn.

So easily it slips between the toes.

~

Turning the final corner

I picture my welcome:

The bark the collie gives a stranger;

the slow burn of recognition

in a wrinkled face; and my words,

faltering and uncertain,

like the first unsteady steps of an Ayrshire calf

staggering towards her mother

With a hunger new born.