Cartography
Following the old maps, he arrived
just where he had planned to be.
The landscape conformed to interpretation:
that hill, those clumps of trees, the village gathered
around the bridge. He saw the things
he’d expected to see, given the forecasts,
the time of year: the lone fox and the raven falling.
He wasn’t prepared for the motorbike
coming screaming round where the road forked right
in a curving descent over spreading contours
to the valley floor. Nothing could indicate how to turn
avoiding oblivion, the uncharted plunge,
the way time stretched through the flick of an eye
to a sound and a light in a circling loop;
but he did.
Gratitude for Whatever
I cant be anything other
Than Grateful.
What’s the point?
Anger?
Hatred?
Jealousy?
Lamentation?It is too hard work.
Gratitude is the point
of least resistance.
Angus was born in Glasgow, grew up in Galloway, and was educated in Edinburgh and Dundee. He has had a career in education which included 25 years as an international school teacher and administrator in Spain, China, Nepal, Indonesia and Zimbabwe. Since winning his school poetry prize in his youth, he has had an abiding interest in poetry and his poems have appeared in various publications. He returned to Edinburgh in 2008 and spends his time writing, doing voluntary work, and addressing conferences, seminars and symposiums about the patient experience of cancer using his poetry as an aid to communication. He has recently published a collection of poems, Lights in the Constellation of the Crab and House Clearing by Moonlight, in aid of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres.
– See more at: https://bodhicharya.org/manyroads/four-poems-by-angus-ogilvy/#sthash.R7xcnKtC.dpuf
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