TURN

Amazing, how one birl & look can turn
a life into something more than itself;
how one small parting of lips, hard-earned
& angled for in a thousand breaths
of response, can draw you in, remould
the very essence of what you’ll be;
one minute unalive to what this holds,
the next a cosmos of possibility.
How futures change so beautifully, unaided.
Who knows the word on which a world might hang?
The past’s a land that’s overcultivated;
let’s turn & till our future earth by hand.

Birl – Turn quickly (Scots)

Stuart A Paterson is a widely published and anthologised Scottish poet living in Galloway. Writing in English and his native Scots language, he’s a previous recipient of an EC Gregory Award and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. From 2017-18, he was BBC Scotland’s Poet-in-Residence.