The News

Edinburgh, May 2005

A braw day to hear it: cloudless, brisk, a pale breezecropping cherry blossoms—petals upturned on streetslike displaced seashells or palms to a saviour; the Firtha glass-topped table decked with salt-and-pepper ferries,the sun a merry presence cleaving space for buoyantmusings—how fine it is to be alive, how fine it’s yet to be.A braw day—I could have touched the sun had I beenminded, and if the me of now had told the me of thenof all that’s intervened, I’d have raised a hand, cupped itsglowing belly, girt myself with golden heat before I took

the call I nearly didn’t take. Though had I not, the newswas sure to bunch time’s weave around the hoursand pull me to it—a plate caught on the conjurer’s cloth,a black-hole-circling star. But I heard what needed hearing,when it wanted to be heard—and it took the feetfrom under me, old certainties puffed like dandelion,each downy seed a thought of what I was to losefluttering on a darkening wind. And I knelt on concretepavement, traced chalk-marks made by children—the outline of your body, though you were not yet dead.