This is a poem I wrote just after my son Andrew was born. At the time we were living in remote Aberdeenshire and Hale-Bopp comet was in the night sky:
The March 1997 news reported this comet as follows: “The appearance of comet Hale-Bopp near the Earth in 1997 has generated wide scientific, public, religious and pseudoscientific interest. Scientists are interested in the unusually high intrinsic brightness of the comet. The public expect the comet to be a spectacle sight.”
The day Andrew was born I bought him a teddy-bear: that bear is called ‘Hale Bopp’ and appears in many of my films:
Frost hit Tillybin and froze the night.
Bitingly cold and startlingly clear.
A night that stirred the soul
A night of Spectacle Sight.
Midnight came rhythmically
Andrew beating his drum:
Sian said ‘time to go!’
The windscreen iced over in anticipant celebration
hands that felt no cold rubbed hurriedly
a telescope to the soul.
The car coughed to life
The farm track bumped and hurdled
– as if urging.
Count the gaps: count the rhythm –
Faster: No time to waste!
Fly the pot-holes
Peer the telescope!
Gosh – what’s that? A jewel. A wonder. A spectacle sight.
Hale-bopp: such Brightness.
SUCH BRIGHTNESS.
Beat the drum, fly the night, catch a star
4.04
and Hale-Bop reigns its brightest!
SUCH BRIGHTNESS.
Peter and Sian
Now ‘mum & dad’
Fingers could not dial
Lips that could not speak
‘we have a boy… a lovely boy’
Beat the drum, Fly the night, Catch a star!
Andrew Robert Gordon born at 4.04am on Saturday the 8th March 1997 in Aberdeen [please click on image below to play: Tillybin [gars my spirits grow]
