A poem for my blog this time - one that I wrote a long time ago.
St Monans
An ancient stone church overlooks the bay
And guards the site of long-deserted graves.
The cold St Monans sea is always grey
And sunlight duns upon indifferent waves.
Plain wooden doors stare coldly as I pass.
The crumbling pavement rasps my tourist feet,
And curtains seem to glare behind the glass
Uncaring windows in the postcard street.
Still I return. The harbour-salted air
And soft wind in the churchyard at the sea
Breathe centuries of death and life and care
To stir a fear of homelessness in me.
I feel the rooted bones of ancient Fife
Expose the vacuum of my modern life.
I still like it after twenty-five years - it's fairly formal but was not hard to write. Like a lot of poems, once it was started, it took on a life of its own. For me it does what I wanted it to do and it still takes me back to a day wandering the streets of St Monans, visiting the old church, looking at the sea and trying to write the trouble out of my head.
