Catriona Sutherland

Braemar

I wanted this new start. To appear to others as something
different. I think part of me, and this makes me feel a bit
sick to admit, was drawn to starting a job as a psych nurse,
as I knew I would be around people who were ‘clinically
confused’- they had an illness, a baseline, that I could
construct a certainty away from.

Lines of green-curving straight,
With white-speckled
Partners of soft spaced light.
That lift up up with the tail- ended breath of
The Mountain stream.
A stream that drops close,
Following the same time-eroded path
Eroded by days like this,
Shifts
Of stone and
The parted wake behind,
Alter and roll,
But the landing is soft
And the trees never mock,
The gentle cadence of connected contours
Through slow-patterned time.

 

Fever-dream

Do you help the alone?
Do you go on back down the pebbled path
Always mid-way
To watch the painted door.
The quiet that stays soft and far,
Of the undenied
The undenied gifts of harm
Of warmth so young
It sings
And melts the feathered cage soft-free.

I am 21 and a fourth year medical student studying at Glasgow University. I have often struggled with the line between connecting
too much with patients, while maintaining a professional boundary, and I use poetry
as a way to navigate this.

Struan Gow

An Announcement:

‘Come here,’ my father had said.
His brow was a weathered headstone.
The sofa was soft beside him. Worn and stained and comfortable
The words jolted and scratched out of his mouth.
A machine breaking down but still running.
Sentence by sentence, his throat was oiled.
I never knew that death could be said
In so many words.
We brought flowers, of course,
But what kind I could not say.
Only that the colours seemed sun-bleached and too white.

The next announcement was by my school
Although I’d heard it before.
It was not said in voice, but in whisper.
But when the boy’s parents came to school,
They screamed like train brakes.
The boy was with the railway tracks
I cannot remember his name.
(I told myself I’d never forget his name).

One by one, the announcements came
Every time the machine seemed slicker, more oiled.
And one by one,
Their exclamation marks became full stops.

 

 

Church Bells:

The stone house played like a music box.
Turning over its spool, and dinging metal soldiers.
What private machinations lie in that box?
It is so beautiful to hear,
As the men drag their ropes down and down again.
They sweat, their hands burning.
But ears do not hear their pain, only the bells.
My! How they sing!
And as I look inside, I can see the choir shuffling in,
Coy smiles here and there.
Chosen of men and chosen of God.
Their voices join the bells. But they do not sing.
It sounds closer to screams.
(I cannot help but hear them as a little boy’s scream.)
The ropes of the bells look more like intestines,
Fat and taut. The men do not notice and pull faster and harder.
Their pain turning to pleasure.
Twisting, pulling, thumbing into clay
Transforming, revolving, remaking anew.
I turn away. The bells are too loud.
The men’s faces too perverse.
And the screaming now sounds like many instead of one.

Struan Gow is a young poet currently living in St Andrews. At twenty years old he’s chemistry student, and uses poetry to understand the line between science and art. Most of his poems focus on self-reflection as such.

 

Catriona Sutherland

Braemar

I wanted this new start. To appear to others as something
different. I think part of me, and this makes me feel a bit
sick to admit, was drawn to starting a job as a psych nurse,
as I knew I would be around people who were ‘clinically
confused’- they had an illness, a baseline, that I could
construct a certainty away from.

Lines of green-curving straight,
With white-speckled
Partners of soft spaced light.
That lift up up with the tail- ended breath of
The Mountain stream.
A stream that drops close,
Following the same time-eroded path
Eroded by days like this,
Shifts
Of stone and
The parted wake behind,
Alter and roll,
But the landing is soft
And the trees never mock,
The gentle cadence of connected contours
Through slow-patterned time.

 

Fever-dream

Do you help the alone?
Do you go on back down the pebbled path
Always mid-way
To watch the painted door.
The quiet that stays soft and far,
Of the undenied
The undenied gifts of harm
Of warmth so young
It sings
And melts the feathered cage soft-free.

I am 21 and a fourth year medical student studying at Glasgow University. I have often struggled with the line between connecting
too much with patients, while maintaining a professional boundary, and I use poetry
as a way to navigate this.