POEM IN WHICH I DO NOT BORROW ANY OF THE WORDS 
FROM A POEM BY HELEN MORT AND USE ALL OF THEM IN A 
DIFFERENT ORDER TO CREATE A POEM IN WHICH

I stepped up
towards mother pines
on the brighter moor,

I saw where five deer
more ragged than
the rose that flickered
lapped every God
to water,

I followed the river back
like each of the otters
at Ullapool did
for them and who/
whatever waited I
at the garden's edge.

The night that never
followed stood on
through fur supple eyes
they-darned in mother,

and Rannoch forest
graceful from
the kingfisher south
where we saw the night
stealing in-between
time,

the pound-coin holidays
she brought out to hers-
the watched ones
looking for their ribs,
and those swears that saw them
the same before teatime.

I must have been
that window in my middle
because I have
no memory of them,
of the house we were then-

the years more
coloured than the trees,
fish-bone closer
than hooves.