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.

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.
Buy your paperback copy at Amazon Books.
Available also on:
Comments