Virgo

“Trying”.
It’s what the horoscope always says.
Virgo: persevering, determined, thorough.
Like a dreary school report
the same from year to year,
“Tries hard. Tries hard”,
but never “Could try harder”.

It’s like being trapped
beneath an unsafe inn sign
that swings and teeters on its chains
threatening fall but hangs on,
doing its best to resist
the thud of adverse wind and weather.

Darlings, it’s not “trying”,
it is trying.

Gill McEvoy‘s first full collection is The Plucking Shed (Cinnamon Press 2010. Her second collection  Rise is due from Cinnamon Press in May 2013. Gill is about to take up her Hawthornden award…so exciting!!

When Earth Was Still a  Single Silver Sphere

(Italo Calvino saluto)

The moon coming closer
pulled the untorn sea a bit
until the shell of it
cracked

and out burst the magma
and the rocks

and instantly there was a most
extraordinary amount of coast.

Andrew Sclater is a garden historian, turned poet and drystane  dyker.  Shortlisted for the Picador Poetry Prize in 2010, his poetry  has since won awards from New Writing North and the Scottish Book
Trust.  He lives in Edinburgh and Northumberland