The Flying Scotsman Poem by Irene Cunningham

Travelling up country to a Glaswegian wake
we fly past a dismembered tree -
Venus de Milo of the hedgerows.

A moving café, trees circling widely,
an ever-changing line of defence.
I’ll catch your last breath.

Inside my mind’s watchful eye the reel
comes to an end and the day blends
into photographs and tapestries.

Fertile old memories fall like gulls
in a downdraft and you are a fragment
of pale blue aura taking your leave.

I feel your worry about the journey -
don’t you know that the grave is almost
a penthouse?

I watched a sunset once, somewhere
between Inverbervie and Montrose.
Fresh air and a cold oceanful of reason

pulled me into a new century, wide-eyed
with old cancer in my blood. We must live
even our death.

(Published in Poetry Scotland 2008)