by Karen Solie
I offer cold, the season working as it should
loneliness, love working as it should
pain, the body working as it should
and failure
a thought indulged in isolation is almost certainly an error
and May the plus-minus sign
final iteration of a declining symbol I sense before opening my eyes
in the cave the firth’s dogs dug for me
that the wind plays
as it plays us all, without courtesy
exceeding demand somewhat
the last seed heads tearing their hair out
and raw chill I suppose I’m expected to defeat
as a matter of principle
Tomorrow, for sure, he will make a start
on his regimen
the body quickly becomes a burden
puts a strain on the carer
gets wet, gets cold, drags its feet through the 10,000 steps
one wakes at night to the sound of it crying
asking for knowledge they don’t make anymore
refusing to go to the spring for water
when in the morning, water is the first thing it wants
A vision
he didn’t seem right, St. Luke
in the dream, he was not mild
and with my own voice bade me look
where the island, yards from shore
had sent forth a bridge of rock
by which I boarded
it was warm, bright, I was alone
the grey sea growled like a gear
not so much heard as felt
and when I turned back, the cave
had receded to a dot
the May rolled, prepared to dive
He reexamines his practice
maybe it’s still too personal, how I’m doing this
moisture in the contemplation oversupplying the contemplated
run-off contributing to the global damp
walls stained with it, rising earth-damp
the May’s hair plastered to its skull, mascara running
staring through the rain-streaked window
staring in or staring out
rocks shivering their molecules are coated with the effort
and the spores whose options are always open
who were born ready
engage their locking jaws
then what had no plan is all plan
lichen’s vow is to embody the composition of the universe
less meaning than a way for meaning to emerge
rock groans under it, gnashes its teeth
but gives in, as everything does
you wouldn’t want to think about it all the time
short, as I am, on deliberate qualities
I would at least rather have death find me breathing normally
even if soaked to the bone in the vanity of seclusion
owing to the excesses of solitude nearly hairless
ascetic to the point of ephemerality and suddenly you can’t hold a shovel
for Pelagius, good deeds and actions are born
in the rational mind, not from grace
he didn’t believe in original sin
you can imagine the trouble he got into over that
old Pelagius, keeping it dry
the nothing I do, my unmade works, the no one I love
the life brought to naught
but might one’s hands not always be empty?
A visitation
Paul, why are you here?
I would sooner send my spirit out walking between the hailstones
than have you drive it to its corner on the fork of your advice
May Island’s undead party orchestra is playing behind the wind, the barking seals
and my little fire’s jumping like a bird tied to a branch
a mist of souls accumulates above the wave action
there are voices in the particles flung wildly about
but you are not the sea, Paul, you have no reason to be here
you are cold crept in to murder my seedling
your ellipses are the stuff of nightmares
I have outlived my future, why invite its ghosts
to bother me where I sleep?
they laugh at the fool wringing his old hands at having burned the beetle
with the kindling
they laugh because I think I am alive
it confuses me, Paul
do you hear the music inside
the May’s everlasting housefire?
do you see the loneliness streaming from its broken windows
like smoke in every direction?
He enquires of the silence
rock ages, is swarmed by a peppery crottle
grasses grow around the crevices small creatures move into
grasses that draw minerals through their stems
I feel it happening all around me
the teachings say no earthly thing is worthy of affection or contemplation
barnacles, mussels, the Patella vulgata
look dried out and foolish at low tide
but I see nothing fallen here
when evening in its uniform jangles its key ring
lyrics float through our common hour
if it’s of no use to us, is it useless?
if it’s useless, does it still not deserve to live?
AN ENTHUSIAST
Endless heritage beneath the heavenly soundshed.
Jet-black amphiboles. Ten varieties of scones
in Elie. Giant centipedes and petrified tree stumps
of the Devonian fossil record. Pyrope garnets at the foot
of Lady’s Tower aren’t quite rare enough to accrue significant
market value, much like the self-taught experts
in autobrecciation and exfoliation weathering
who work their way to the surface of the Coastal Path
at the close of a hard winter. Amateur geologists,
rockhounds, and collectors may be distinguished
by their commitments to task-specific outerwear
but a bin bag rain poncho is not the measure of a person.
Ideas gather around phenomena as though for warmth.
Between art and science, our method is the stage
upon which the universal plays in the fragment.
Form in number, ratio in form. A nice bit of white-trap
or ironstone in a setting of green tuff
inspires a loyalty appropriate to no other relationship.
In the floodlights of taxonomy subjects evaporate,
at peace, and an uncompromised image steps forward.
I like it at sea level. It’s the right amount of exposition for me
on the shores of the Great Archive. When you bring pain,
as you feel you must, when the exhausting singularity
spreads through my limbs, I look to sandstone
comprehending itself by breaking at joints produced
by the forces. To the stacks, preferentially
and justly eroded along their planes of weakness by seas
four metres higher. As again they well may be.
FROM THE INVERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE FIRTH OF FORTH, PART 2, 1881
i.
On the long-lines, Newhaven
under the name of Menipea ternata
very rare
We dredged this species
last summer
The Canda reptans
of various authors
we dredged several times last summer
on Newhaven pier
found it in refuse
Bicellaria ciliata
we dredged last summer and previously
Bugula avicularia
west of Inchkeith, 5 fathoms
B. murrayana
on fishermen’s nets, Cellaria fistidosa
is common in the Forth
We’ve dredged it frequently on the oyster bank
/> in 14 fathoms off Longniddry
and took it last summer
The Salicornaria farciminoides
Flustra foliacea
of Johnston, and others
in 4 fathoms, at Aberdour
F. carbasea
last summer, off Fidra
M. pilosa
cast ashore after storms
C. denticulate, in the firth, not uncommon
We dredged it last summer
south-west of Inchkeith, 5 fathoms
9 fathoms
off Aberlady Bay
Vesicularia spinosa
we have dredged in abundance
It’s often found deprived of the polypites
The Serialaria lendigera tangled in masses
among other Polyzoa or Zoophytes
Awnella fusca
among rejectamenta, on corallines
Styela grossularia
under large stones at Newhaven
Peltogaster paguri
of Carcinus maenas
to floating timber
attached to the abdomen
Lepas anatifera
Balanus balanoides
abundant between tide marks
we have dredged very frequently in pretty deep water
ii.
We have dredged it. We have taken this species.
Dead valves at Cramond Island, and St. Andrews Bay.
T. pullastra, pure white, occasionally.
We dredged it last summer off the Isle of May.
Scrobicularia prismatica sparingly alive at low water.
Empty shells, with valves still united, are commoner.
On the beach. Brought up by storms. S. piperata
well preserved, but not living; they lie in a bed of blue clay.
iii.
Limnoria lignorum, we obtained at Elie. Nephrops
norvegicus in immense numbers. Crangon vulgaris
on Seafield’s sandy beaches. Lithodes maja, from stomach
of cod. Porcellana platycheles, Crail and Fifeness, low
water. Stenorhynchus rostratus in near every dredgeful.
Eurynome aspera, Prestonpans and Portseaton.
This deep-water form is rare in the firth. P. puber,
caught on deepsea lines, east and west
of Inchkeith, off Fidra, and May. With M. marmorata
in roots of Laminaria, on the Newhaven shore
after storms. We have dredged it, and also collected it
at Portobello. But Ophiocomina nigra, a specimen
from Mr. Damon, marked “Black Rocks, Leith,” I have
sought at the lowest spring tides, without success.
THE SHAGS, WHOSE CONSERVATION STATUS IS “OF LEAST CONCERN”
What night-collector conveniently forgot
her bag of demons on the neighbour’s roof?
Cackling softly over the stick tool of 4 a.m.,
loosening the drawstring with clothy knee
and elbowings, they’d pop out shaking the dregs
from their hackles, consumed by evil
laughter, ahistorical croaks, benthic creaks,
then shrieks and howling underscored
by homuncular medieval babies in sotto voce,
declamations via voice prosthetic, robot
pet sounds, and I lay there cursing them, the whole
family, though I had nothing to be up for.
On vertebral rock near the Caiplie Caves
like shreds of an outline or shadows freed
of their antecedents, they dry their wings,
eyes closed, faces to the sun. Centre of no
universe, they have the run of the great ancillary.
Though likely they loom large in the imagination
of the sand eel whose peripheries
they torment. As their shouting did mine
wee hours in the silt of my own domain before
the chicks fledged, presumably, the parents
moved on. And I missed them then, as we do
the ones loved best when not around.
“GOODBYE TO COCKENZIE POWER STATION, A CATHEDRAL TO COAL”
— The Guardian, Sept. 15, 2015
It might’ve sprouted from the rhizome of the Leven
Syncline, fed on a post-war optimism
without joy, full of use, liberated
from embarrassing sensitivity. Every idea a lesser one
in proximity to its architecture of practice, purity
of self-definition. Cockenzie Station demonstrating
the irreducible — gas, ash, atmosphere
deformed by a temperament
(May Island
nostalgic in its visual field, quaint
with legend, relics, conservation, charm,
whose old ways are showing,
infrastructure repurposed,
adapted, added to, full of feeling)
under which Glenrothes matured.
Sister stations at Kincardine, Methil, Longannet.
Thousands daily down the open pits
three thousand feet into
the Carboniferous East Lothian, obliged
by the Brutalist winding tower. The water used
was town water. Rail-borne, road-borne coal
pulverized, blown to the furnaces
(and Stevenson’s lighthouse
a gothic castle, retrofitted
for automation and designated
heritage. May’s volcanic columns
are outdated, permanent, proudly
whitewashed in birdshit and myth)
living and dying by viability and the violation
at the core of achievement. Which, at a distance
is restful, has meaning. Two five-hundred-foot towers
visible from Edinburgh
an avant-garde mechanical gesture,
the modern right to accomplish nothing exceptional
and to do it without style. Cultural criticism
at its fullest expression
(martyrdom, murder,
misfortune yielding a surplus of ghosts
for an island one kilometre squared,
if ghosts were an idea still tolerated
by the non-tourism sector; though the non-
tourism sector tolerates what it must)
with the decency to not outlive its service.
Historical preservation averted on closure
once the photographs appeared,
but narrowly: the turbine, condenser,
control panel, fans, and electrostatic precipitators
of mid-century daring, in vintage colours,
fixtures and components exerting
an undeniable sentimental appeal to a heyday
incandescent and wasteful.
It happens to us all. Demolition halted its slide
into the figurative, and the land
newly earmarked for habitat, an eco-village
and cruise ship terminal
on what some are calling the Scottish Riviera.
A TRAWLERMAN
The sea is neither animal
nor god. Won’t be tamed or appeased.
Aidan gave his young priest oil
to calm the waves, but myth is most useful
when it rouses a body
to work harder. Body, spirit, fire, and water
having been absorbed into the world
of commerce in which even
seabirds participate. Their convergence
a sign of herring in the Haikes.
Profit unites great distances, yet its heart
beats inside us. But Evelyn,
whatever counts me truly among the living
resides with you. The rest just
perseverance and good gear.
Ran 30 minutes from Fife Ness,
all nets shot by 9, sky looks like wind.
Soon, heavy swell, the underwater cables
writhing. This foul coastline laced in wrecks.
We’ll take tea with the black squad
while we can, and your fine bread, Evelyn.
The ’38 winter herring overspilled
box and barrel, silvered the piers
at St. Monans, and the market so strong
fish girls’ fingernails dissolved
in brine. No one can predict how herring run.
They are a tender species, easily
influenced. It was luck brought them in
with money circulating freely
as the Germans prepared for war.
SHE IS BURIED ON THE WEST BRAES
In the air, wasn’t it, like rain, or ash.
A mineral agitation achieved the pitch of an anxiety
that makes things happen.
Once sat women. They sat here, then there.
They got on the odd nerve
and the minister, Cowper, a conflict-driven figure
calm brought out the worst in.
When the boy ran afoul of Beatrix Laing
it started up again.
Pretty Pittenweem, red roof tile
from the low countries. Grey, wind-scoured Pittenweem,
sky preserved in salt.
The church’s script rehearsed in the blood
of Patrick Morton, as in us all. In his fits, ague, respiratory distress
it found its actor and its audience.
Maybe his accusations were malicious, maybe not.
The mind casts its own spells.
You don’t need telling what we did to Janet Cornfoot.
You know the ingenuity of cruelty’s life cycle
as well as I do. Ergot, St. Anthony’s Fire
one theory to resolve what is no mystery. Not in America
and not here.
We weren’t poisoned,
we were the infected crop passing alkaloids