Poems written at Disblair House, Aberdeenshire, 19th October 2024:
D I S B L A I R
More beautiful than any dolls house
this ancient place,
forever in sympathy with its
setting.
Here, Old Machar became new
a central feathered granite stairway
welcomes guests
through Abergeldie doorways:
‘we met yesterday’ said the room.
persistence of old takes stamina:
no bumpy approach track could contest!
Talk about the Art of transition!
Tillybin would understand:
– drums beat
– nights fly
stars gloriously free.
K I N G S E A T H o s p i t a l
It was the 1994 FIFA World Cup,
141 goals were scored that summer.
I saw nearly all of them on the old wooden television in the doctors’ residence!
The microwave no longer worked, but the kettle did
and I did just fine!
The faded curtains in the doctor’s bedroom
a green and white pattern of ivy,
failed to meet in the middle –
through the gap you could see the stars shine bright.
The reassuring early morning sound of the gardener’s lawn mower:
the bowling green ready to play
Never did I hear the clatter of bowls.
The doctors’ library opened out into the doctors’ residence:
what the whole of this society owes to Aesculapius!
But it was the ill-arranged ephemera of gathered time
that captured me.
Here I grew to appreciate the company of people
who listened to the world.
Kindness of being was there in Clouston ward:
led by a doctor
who without ever really knowing,
made you feel better through just being there.
30 summers have passed since those days,
And today, up and down that dip from Newmachar,
I returned to Kingseat Hospital.
A new housing estate greeted me,
almost a new town,
with no school, no shop,
off-the-peg street names
off-the-peg houses.
Planners imaginations stifled for profit.
And sitting puzzled amidst this new world,
the roofless hospital ruins.
This is no healing landscape.
Trees planted when the hospital was first built, now mature
Autumn colours comfortingly vivid
the dappled, darting, reflected light,
impossible to catch.
Doctor, why are you striding about there?
The reality I had known no longer existed
The window attempted a smile
How do you seize the past? Can we ever do so?
The past moves only as a feeling
Memory is inside me.
ABSTRACTIONS
I had not lang been at school
already considered ‘backward’
an my faither, in search o’ Abergeldie
had his bairns finding
aivry deid ‘Peter Gordon’ on
a’ the tombstones in the Kirkyard.
Aye, ther wis mony deid Peter Gordons!
An as bairns, we skipped wi’ glee
as we found wan aifter anaither!
I didnae oonerstan’ at the time,
I wis ‘backward’, ye ken,
sic a profoond lesson:
the reverse side of a’ words.
The abstract distance wis lost oan me:
my notes an self, alreedy Petering oot.
By Peter Scott-Gordon
19 October 2024
Childhood notes gathered in Glenmuick Kirkyard:
b r i d g e s
I am tired of roundabouts!
Give me a bridge!
Let us cross together
towards the middle distance of an idea:
learning from life in a different way.
brothers
this, ‘our’ world
needs no more
masculinity.
my mother
had three brothers –
the first died before she was born
the second was almost a generation older than her
the third, her half-brother, who she only met as a toddler, died last year.
two beautiful sisters
helped shape me –
in becoming Peter.
in my stravaiging
journeys became gateways
two brothers took my hand
vox humana and vox celeste.
*vox humana = Callum Reid; vox celeste = Martin Wyllie
DUNBAR’S CLOSE
He planted that garden with
flair, imagination,
maybe even nostalgia.
How is he that gentle gardener?
This poem is for Seamus Filor, who was one of my tutors when I studied Landscape Architecture with the University of Edinburgh.
F E R R Y
Those different coloured chalks
Eyes that blazed before she was born
Those different coloured chalks
Years and years have poured into these moments
Those different coloured chalks
There are no degrees to amazement
This poem is for Rachel, who lives in Broughty Ferry [‘Ferry’]. The coloured chalks refer to Rachel, her mum, her Grandma and her great Grandma, all of whom were Dux of their respective schools.
Grandma’s Last Night
Pirouetting on her doorstep
Grandma asked:
‘What is Dark matter?’
We had no answer –
we repeated what we had read:
‘It is 95% unknown’
Then it was time to go, always time to go,
Grandma waved to us from the window.
L U C A
You are old now
your eccentricities
outstrip your age.
However grey your fur gets
it will always be ‘superior fur’!
However croaky your MIAOW becomes
we will hear you!
N E V E R L A N D
Nature outlives every gardener
Nature helps us create NEVERLANDS
S T R O K E
In a stroke
a father
finally met
his son
My father had a stroke on the 2nd November 2023. He nearly did not survive. He has shown such fortitude in living with this and the resulting complete loss of independence.
Storm Ashley
Expected tomorrow,
west to east:
with a NEON yellow warning
Make a note in the margin.
Seaton park in the rain,
a faded note pinned upon a GATE.
Ruichlachrie’s clearance,
that little bit of activity
[trapped like Peter, p130, in time]
Ruichlachrie was a small croft in Glen Bruar, sitting high above the Bruar water. On the last day of 2021, at Ruichlachrie, I had an unexpected seizure. Ruichlachrie has been cleared from the landscape.
Nostalgias
We witness their own birth
they die with us.
T R E E T O P S
The ‘Class of 1990’ Graduation Ball,
the Treetops Hotel, Aberdeen.
I was in the stinging undergrowth:
h u r t i n g –
no Marigold gloves
could protect me.
In the DOME
Sian reached
for my hand
pulling me back into the
T R E E T O P S
The Treetops Hotel was demolished some years ago [‘This isn’t a new note, though it’s new to you. It’s an old note that I lost’]
The IAMBIC
Fondly you teased me,
bravely you stood up for me.
From canto to canto
a scavenger and philosopher –
with that fourth kind of vision:
‘Outsider Art’ and all that
[Required reading: Journal no. 21, page 79 -86]
A madman for sure!
The M O D E M
[Royal Cornhill Hospital] [Without institutional approval] [Art doesn’t keep predictable hours]
Brand
New
Hospital
Before
Algorithms
Before
A.I.
Downloaded
Overnight
Via
Modem
Adobe
Photoshop.
Your Pharmacy
Gilbert, your pharmacy has closed,
your old shop is too small.
Business is still booming
‘cures’ for ALL
This is no fairy tale.
This poem is for Gilbert Farie, Bridge of Allan
