If there had been a single branch to whittle into a kindly tune

to keep the devil and his two hundred witches away that Thursday

I walked unthinking through the jawbones of the Auld Kirk by the shore

I would have cut it and cored it and played a last Tudor air

to the gannet lying like a young dead prince beside the saltwater children’s pool

Taken from the Knot series, Hawthornden Castle, 2010