Page 45 - Microsoft Word - 1_light travels_FOR FLIPBOOK ADJUSTED.docx

Hours later, Hadrian’s Wall stretched out in soft rain. The Picts were fiercest of all, feared nobody.
The Romans built the wall
to keep these tattooed men at bay.
Ear to stone I heard Puck*, oldest thing in history, telling the children soldier stories.
On the northern train home
I remembered a scene
from The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Sabina leaned out of a coal train... gathered her body back in,
laughed and mounted the lap of a lover, her face soaked with rain.
We crossed back over to the land of Picts, got dropped in a village again,
sampled uisge beatha* with weathered men. On leaving the hearth with glowing cheeks, crisp air shocked lungs, seagulls
stirred a stormy sky,
once again a shutter fired.
On the bus between Dumfries and Kirkcudbright
I thumbed through a guide to single malt
while Jimmy the Tex volunteered peaty pronunciations: ‘Glenmorangie – Lagavulin – Laphroaig...’