Whiteford Lighthouse

By Andrew C. Kidd:

Dimmed lampless and housed upon split shells that anchored
a cast iron mass, bedded to the seabed. Waves rolled across
and based its sailless mast, part-sunken, parting the sea.

Along the gantry, silent cormorants dotted mussel-black.
Their feathery cloaks ruffled gently in the sea-facing wind.
From this angle, it looked like a glassless aviary, iron-wrought,

emptied. On this rocky outcrop, fresh water basined to fill
and veil the rock beds and broken shells, yielding new life
after the lengthening advance and retreat of the diurnal tides.

Through its birdcage structure, the winter sun dipped to shroud
as evening that descended blue-violet, blanketing the day
and birds that disappeared from sight upon this windswept sound.

***

Andrew C. Kidd has had poetry and flash fiction published in Elsewhere: A Journal of Place, Journal of the American Medical Association and Friday Flash Fiction.

View from Bo'ness Harbour

By Andrew C. Kidd: 

Pink skies purple the hills.
The contrast of colours sharp-edge
to collage like clippings
cut out of a magazine.

Raggy strips from lighter pages
tear softly across
in three or four distinct
tincture lines:

lilac, peach, cream and soft yellow
smudge the down-curtaining day.
A faint thumbprint
of the moon is half-pressed

slowly bleeding into evening’s
blue hues, blending with water’s margin,
interrupted by
light-dot lattice and towers ahead

from where smoke ropes up
or down
depending on whether fire or sky-melt
pulls you in the hardest.

***

Andrew C. Kidd is an emerging writer. He is currently writing poetry that explores the intersection of the environment and industry.