Ghosts,kids and dogs.

Brechin.

I was visiting the place between the old allotments
and the Cathedral with its round tower

and I walked into wraiths wasting themselves along the dog-leg path
leaving their imprint like cleavers in the skin

they were transients detached from any former existence
pressing themselves towards me through the air

in some nihilistic pursuit
causing my thoughts to be more fluid than before

how to describe the intangible
that these haunters may be the most haunted ones after all

trapped between the walls of there and here
mouthing their unanswerable questions



Conversations about animals, aged eight.

We discussed the practicalities
of keeping a boa constrictor in a garden shed.
Then you said being a vegetarian
would be the only way to go,
for anyone wanting to be at one with animals.
After playing a tiger prowling in her enclosure
you watched a ladybird taking flight from your hand.
All so abundant when I was your age,
we cared so little when something died.
I wonder would you have run, as I did,
from the gorilla throwing faeces from behind its bars,
drowned wasps in jam jars, dissected dogfish
or regarded more in wonder than in fear,
every species we're now hell-bent on killing.



Tea chest dog.

Tail up, round haunches,
paws splayed on the firm sand,
crunching on the cockle beach,
ears like funnels, blown about in the wind,
paddling through the sand ridges,
past the dunes sculptured into wadi-like valleys,
the primrose slopes,
discarded bits of rope,
the birch wood and the female deer you did not see.
I'm thinking, if we'd not made that trip
you'd still be in that tea chest kennel
never licking salt from your feet.

Copyright  Jane Aldous