Ode to a Burning Astronaut

Published annually, New Writing Scotland provides a reliable harvest of interesting, arresting writing. The latest volume, number 36 to be exact, is titled With Their Best Clothes On (ASLS, £9.95) and edited by Susie Mcguire and Samuel Tongue. It’s filled with fresh work by veterans of this column – Harry Giles, Jim Carruth, Russell Jones and more – but the poem we’re featuring today is by Al Mcclimens, a stranger to these parts.

The axis tips the planet from the light as berries unbutton the hawthorn’s sleeves and blackbirds model seasonal colours. The horse chestnuts are pyromaniacs. Their fuses fizz, leaves blister in fulminating displays, dropping in fiery parachute descents until the park is crazy-paved in embers while the sky razzle dazzles, its clouds on fire.

In spring I rose before the lark, flew much too high and scorned the altitude, the sun’s hot lick and thinning oxygen. But the knack of re-entry eluded my grasp. I burnt my fingers on the cosmic edge of space. There’s no escaping time or gravity. What goes up as a rocket comes down as a stick. You can find a copy of With the Best Clothes On: New Writing Scotland 36, edited by Susie Mcguire and Samuel Tongue, at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. For poetry enquiries, e-mail reception@ spl.org.uk or visit www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk.