Brian Johnstone
Brian Johnstone has published two collections and three pamphlets. His second collection is The Book of Belongings (Arc, 2009). His work has appeared throughout Scotland and in the UK, America and Europe. Terra Incognita, a collection in Italian translation, was published in 2009. He co-founded Shore Poets in 1991.
The headlights beam into the dark,
illuminating silence the vehicle moves into,
distant till it dopplers past, a fan of light
that breaks upon a sky so full of stars
it’s nothing but the swipe of us
intruding for a moment on the pitch of night
much as a match flares till it’s shaken out,
or as we try to make our mark
but stumble, spill its substance, light up
our surroundings only briefly, see
there’s nothing more than we’d steered into,
find we’re fumbling for the map.
First published in “Gutter”, issue 4, Spring 2011
Perhaps it is enough to walk along
these edges, gather stones
and send them skimming over water
till each ripple copies and recopies,
spreads still further from your gaze
and the stone sinks deeper,
out of reach. At these places
where the meeting and the parting
are the same, the sands run smoothest;
shores are banked with rushes
whose singularity of line stands sheer
and pencil thin against the space
each interrupts. Until they flower:
a seedhead budding from the stems
whose starkness seemed exact
before the breeze got up, the light changed
in that way you’d often heard about
that brings the distance close to shore;
and you began to notice how things were.
How rush stems paired and danced
in moving air, formed geometries
inclining to each other, held space
the way a pair of hands cups time.
It is enough to know this, see how right
can be the bending of a line,
how integral the angle of these stems
to their perfection. They hold your eye
as, from the shore, you take the gift
you’ve chanced upon; thinking simply
that the stone, which rests a moment
cool against your palm, must be
as perfect too; that it will find the water
fitting to its temper, move across the surface,
will not cease. And in the endless light
of June, you crouch down at the lakeside,
make the throw. It goes and goes.
First published in “The Book of Belongings” (Arc, 2009)
