INSPIRATION

The gypsy told me, looking at my palm,
my romantic soul would be my joy and grief;
the gift of the star that I was born beneath.
So poetry binds me like a wishing-charm.

Not from my mother, with her gloom and spite,
with her glass half empty, her horizons low
who only saw the bleakness, not the beauty of snow,
did I inherit poetry, or try to write.

Perhaps from my father – a russet, freckled man
with roots on the edge of Caithness’ harbour strand
Who copied “Flower of Scotland” in his looping hand
And kept a pocket version of the old Khayyam.

But when you and I, love, each took up a pen –
Christ! But we were Romeo and Juliet, then!