Clothes poles and crosses

I took these a couple of years ago from the back garden of my old flat in Arbroath. I liked that flat, and I'm sorry I left it in many ways. At the bottom of the garden was a wall and on the other side, the Brothock Burn ran down to the sea. I used to love looking over the wall on summer evenings watching the ducks, geese, gulls, dippers and occasionally kingfishers swooping down the burn. The kingfishers were amazing and a sure sign of the increase in quality of the burn. It was the first and only time I've seen them in Scotland. It was a real haven in the middle of town. The irony is that I now work right across the road from where my old flat was. It would have taken roughly 20 seconds to get to work in the morning had I stayed there....... oh well!

The top pic I think has a particular relevance for Easter...... or is it just me?

Kingfisher

That kingfisher jewelling upstream
seems to leave a streak of itself
in the bright air. The trees
are all the better for its passing.

It's not a mineral eater, though it looks it.
It doesn't nip nicks out of the edges
of rainbows. - It dives
into the burly water, then, perched
on a Japanese bough, gulps
into its own incandescence
a wisp of minnow, a warrior stickleback.
- Or it vanishes into its burrow, resplendent
Samurai, returning home
to his stinking slum.

Norman MacCaig 1910-1996

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