Two little reflections on nature by the Elgin-born poet-cleric Andrew Young, with stars, real or symbolic, as the link. His Selected Poems are published by Carcanet at £9.95.

                        DAISIES

The stars are everywhere tonight,

Above, beneath me and around;

They fill the sky with powdery light

And glimmer from the night-strewn ground;

For where the folded daisies are

In every one I see a star.

~

And so I know that when I pass

Where no man’s shadow counts the hours

And where the sky was there is grass

And where the stars were there are flowers,

Through the long night in which I lie

Stars will be shining in my sky.

             THE COBWEB

Where idle cobwebs mist the furze

And shake with the least wind that stirs

Their outspread pattern on twig-fork,

Belying the keen spider’s work

Against one trembling web has blown

And struck a starry thistle-down.

~

Hid in the shadow of a leaf

I see that spider nurse his grief,

A close-hunched ball; content enough

I spring the crafty cobwebs of

My labour and my idleness

To catch a star by its silken tress.