Care
Dark red, dark green;
his jacket on a chair;
the dog barks outside.
A white van arrives;
its tyres crack across gravel
until silent.
The whistling…
“Give this man his daily bread
and give the dog a bone.”
Whistling man, closer now;
and his strange scent,
closer still – pepper, pepper.
Afterwards, the old man wipes
his mouth
and says, “Thank you.”
Dark red, dark green;
his jacket on a chair;
the dog barks outside.
Michael McGill is an Edinburgh poet who has recently been published in Obsessed with Pipework, The High Window, Dream Catcher, The Transnational, Northwords Now, Glasgow Review of Books and The Haiku Quarterly. He has also performed his poetry on The Verb on BBC Radio 3.