New Year Doors are locked to neighbours nowat midnight on Hogmanay,the ‘first-fit’ a thing of the past:my grandparents’ house heaving with guests,the coal fire crackling, the craicmixing with smoke in the atmosphere. I tell the bairn of it like some mythabout a hearth long agowhen Daddy had dark hairand was the first to tread indoorand…

        Vital Organs   ICU, Easter, 2020   An outsider looking in might imagine they were seeing the interior of a space ship; ventilators, dialysis machines, monitors surrounded a station full of computers and strange-looking creatures, indistinguishable from one another. In gowns, masks, goggles and gloves with only a scribble like a tattoo…