You May Not Take Me from The Hills, The Sea

On 27 July, Jupiter Artland – the sculpture park and art gallery near Wilkieston, in West Lothian – presents an outdoors reading by Saltire Prize-winning poet Ryan Van Winkle, beginning at 7pm (£12, or £10.80 to Jupiter Artland members). Ryan’s poem ‘You May Not Take Me from the Hills, The Sea’ is taken from his collection The Good Dark (Penned in the Margins, £9.99). The waves were white shoes crashing down wooden stairs. We took pictures

of night. The hills’ tight jeans stretched over guarded mounds, zipped up lying down.

March your fingers over, push on organs and seams.

Our captain was a boat in a bottle his son couldn’t catch.

Answers on a high shelf, in the back closet, with the shoebox gun. It has been taken

apart and put back together. Here we have only the slant

of rain, the smell of oil in the burning dark.