#brian johnstone

[ukdamo]

Craiglockhart

Brian Johnstone

Maybe they’re here somewhere, lost in these crowds of students, informal in their tweeds, plus fours –

Sassoon, the elder, Sunday golfer; Owen, bookish, gangly, pale – mingling with the queue for the refectory,

snatching nervously at fags, ignoring notices forbidding all those here to smoke. You catch a glimpse

you think, later, in the distance – backs straight, military haircuts – turning down a corridor you glance along

but they’re not there. No, no-one is, though low light slants through window frames, plants these crosses on the wall.

[nutshellsandnuggets]

Brian Johnstone - Two Poems

The Weather In Crete the smatter of the poplar leaves that mimics summer rain is but a shadow of the snow drifts blossoms form in wind their soft-as-cotton flakes finding every breath of air to fall a white-out in the balmy dark that laughs at winter’s chill * Doggerland What no-one noticed struck them nonetheless. Age was granted to a few. Time moved too slowly. Sea wrack growing on the shore, told more. The waters trod on feet so silent none could hear, none trace their spoor. Paths were lost in sandhills. Camps visited, for many generations, struck. * Brian Johnstone has published six collections, most recently Dry Stone Work (Arc, 2014). His work appears on The Poetry Archive. His memoir Double Exposure will be published by Saraband in 2017. http://brianjohnstonepoet.co.uk/ A short poem can shine like a jewel in the dark or restore like a dram in the cold.

[nutshellsandnuggets]

Brian Johnstone - Two Poems

ctrl alt it isn’t the keys that frighten but the notions they embody a single fingerprint away a slip-step that will just suffice to make the difference between a slip of paper and a ream a file to take cognisance of what’s written and repair the plain assertion of the pen * Whites End on you notice one of these or both could be a rose a blossom packed in its essentials fresh and tightly rolled these napkins, each a bud of light and shadow stowed. * Brian Johnstone has published six collections, most recently Dry Stone Work (Arc, 2014). His work will appear on The Poetry Archive. He has read at festivals from Macedonia to Nicaragua. http://brianjohnstonepoet.co.uk/ A short poem can shine like a jewel in the dark or restore like a dram in the cold.

[nutshellsandnuggets]

Brian Johnstone - Two Poems

Isle of May AD 875 Certain we were dead, they took ship and quit The May. Coward, I crawled from the drain I’d stuck myself in: counted amongst the dead, now counting them. Something had left us, empty, bone upon the rocks, flesh torn, as hawks would a hare, as eagles, a lamb. Real Estate You're back in bird street, where boxes hug the trees infants at their mother's skirt. Numbered from eighty to the tun, they're empty, up for let, each door held waiting on the spring. Brian Johnstone has published six collections, most recently Dry Stone Work (Arc, 2014). His work will appear on The Poetry Archive. He has read at festivals from Macedonia to Nicaragua. http://brianjohnstonepoet.co.uk/ A short poem can shine like a jewel in the dark or restore like a dram in the cold.