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An Inconvenient Roundabout

  • Dougie
  • Jun 19
  • 2 min read

Last of my poems, for a while, from Something That Comes Close, my debut published collection. Available to buy in paperback from Amazon Books, and as an eBook on Kindle, Kobo or Booktopia. Additional information at the bottom of this post.


This one is a bit longer than the others. But not too long.


I was seventeen years old at the time (which was not yesterday). Sometimes, though, it feels like yesterday. But that's not a bad way to be. It suggests to me that some things in life really do matter.


An Inconvenient Roundabout


Never had I seen as many people

“gathered here today”

with such a singular focus that was not

entertainment of one form or another:

not football, or the new James Bond,

or the Glasgow parade of the Loyal

Orange Order, or Boxing Day sales.


Family, of course. His brother, younger

by ten years. His wife’s three sisters –

Helen, Margaret, Nan and husbands

(all of whom found jobs in Coventry)

The sisters’ brother (uncle Joe)

who was, inexplicably, a member

of the Loyal Orange Order.


Cousins, nieces, nephews, our great aunties

(but no surviving uncles from that generation)

friends of every stripe and age, neighbours (old

and new) and fellow workers, fellow worshippers:

a preacher from Portsoy, a Tory MP,

a trade union shop steward, the first female

newsreader on Scottish television, and more.


A multitude. ‘Jock Tamson’s bairns’ decked out

in all their Sunday best: clean-shaven, good haircuts,

dark suits, white shirts, black ties, black shoes,

black dresses and black coats. The whole shebang

milling together in Brownian motion, the sombre

circles in a Venn diagram of our grief’s connective

tissue, waiting at the door of the crematorium.


There was an awkward delay: the hearse blocked

by a difficult manoeuvre at an inconvenient roundabout

(as if a hearse had never been this way before).

The limos lined up like a scene from The Godfather.


In the family (first) car, Lou, his brother-in-law

(a man who could sleep on the edge of a razor blade)

wound down his window to see what the fuss was.

And next to a hole in the ground, Shakespearean,

as if from Hamlet, Act Five, Scene One,

a gardener or grave digger; in real life

and this death: speaking to no one

in particular in the grief-stricken car.


“Big turnout.

He must have been important.”


To which our uncle Lou replied,

“He is to me”

then wound back-up the window.


Two Currawong feathers -- one large, one small -- side by side. At the mid-point of each feather, where black meets white, a small speckled egg shell rests. The top of the egg has been broken off and is nowhere to be seen.
Illustration by Spike Deane

Something That Comes Close is the debut work of Scottish-born writer Dougie Herd, now living in Australia. Reflections on becoming, on the joy of simple things, on life's hopeful journey. Sometimes sad because life sometimes is. But never despairing or despondent. Cos life's too short.

  • Pulse: memory, life and death, loss, dislocation.

  • Place: here and there, then and now, home and somewhere else.

  • Encounters: the unexpected.

  • Foolish Things: some of which are not entirely pointless.

  • Waving: the possibility of renewal, the necessity of change, the inevitability of silence.

Words by Dougie Herd. Illustrations by Spike Deane.


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