Song - Sea of Sand
You sent me to the moon
Across a silent sea of sand
I was reaching for your hand
But you were standing on a hill
You launched me to the moon
Across the wind between the stars
I was reaching through the sand
But I was fading out of view
I was just a photograph
An old fading black and white
Taken by a passer-by
When the sun was out of sight
You sent me to the moon
I caught the desolation bus
There was no-one there but us
I saw your shadow on the sand
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poem by Jim Hogg
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song - Back To Galloway
Back to Galloway
If you’ll come with me, I’ll go back
To where the River Luce falls blue
Through glens of Hazel to the sea
Where my heart lies and yours lies too
If you’ll go with me, I’ll go too
To sit and watch the Fulmars soar
Beyond the cliff towards the sun
Beyond the horn that roars no more
If you’ll come with me, I won’t wait
The Lost Road reaches all the way
Through all we’ve known, through all we’ve shared
And we must walk that way again
(chorus)
We’re going back to Galloway
Back to the simple life we knew
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poem by Jim Hogg
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V
I saw you in a dream old friend,
when we were dead and you were young.
You circled like an enemy
and vainly talked of other dead
and how, amongst them all
you still were looking good,
for someone over seventy.
No subterfuge in mind
I told you of the passing
of someone you'd never known,
and you replied as if you had,
with too much puzzling truth-
and, your stutter had been cured
in the afterlife's selective grace-
as both of us manoeuvred
alert and tense on dry white sand
by dunes that stretched away
to soft white floes of cloud
-so like a place I used to know,
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poem by Jim Hogg
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Farewell to Islay
Snowflakes on your long blonde hair
we slipped and slid over icy ruts,
by the curve of soot stained tenements
long swept from Eldon street.
The Kelvin cut through floes of ice
by the back of the bustling Doublet.
Students of liquor spilled out laughing
in front of us into the snow.
A cold wind swirled through Maryhill
to the doors of the Q M Halls,
where I last heard your voice;
and last looked into your eyes.
Before you left for Oban
from a Glasgow that’s almost gone.
Pale blue ink on pale blue lines
reminds me of your letters still;
reminds me of a teenage girl
who crossed the sea from Islay.
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poem by Jim Hogg
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Song - A Girl With Hair Like Yours
A girl with hair like yours
Was standing on the bus
She hurled me back into
A sudden swirl of us
I couldn’t push straight through
I couldn’t turn away
We kissed down by the shore
In cold and salty spray
A girl with hair like yours
She turned on all the lights
She broke down all the doors
Invaded all my nights
She told me she was mine
then caught a flight to Spain
I danced around the gym
With you and Don McLean
A girl with hair like yours
Made everything less clear
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poem by Jim Hogg
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Song - Between The Isles of Marie
There’s pride in the flowing, down over the shore, into the bordering sea.
There’s struggle in wait in the tangle that sways, between the waves and the stream
in that mirror of dreams ‘tween the Isles of Marie, reaching in vain for the moon.
And there by the brink of the rise and fall, we knew what we had was good
For moments so brief, in this chance passing through, we savoured the frost and the rain.
We wrestled to live in that basin of life so free of shadow and stain
on the restless edge of that salty lagoon, far from the tides of the street;
free of the deals that swirl in a world that sways between rules and deceit
Though icy winds blew through the white sweeping light fading into the dawn
a blanket of hush sheltered the shore ‘til the depths of darkness were gone.
Or bidden by tides that fell by the sun, we’d wade in sweltering heat,
into the shallows hoping to share, in the grace and wealth of the sea.
And we were just kids then, lacking in choices, though richly laden with life.
But witched by that light cutting the night, we couldn’t foresee just how blind
are the eyes of the child to the darkness in life, unveiled as the years unrolled
when we left behind that dance with the tide, down on the beckoning shore.
poem by Jim Hogg
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I Saw You By The Clyde
I met Scott Walker by the river,
his Golden Retriever unwinding
amongst the trees and the winterblown grass;
and I was whistling Angels of Ashes -
discordant, untrammelled, in low, slow mist
creeping between the cold deeps of grey water
and the saturated wishes written
on the faded leaves still holding,
loyal and fast, to a season we’ve lost.
And we stopped mundanely, compulsively,
and talked of venom and of gentleness;
and I couldn’t help but say that we’d lost ours.
We used to walk and he would race
around and across, nose deep into spring,
into ancient commitments
and thrill, like freedom should be,
through the nettles and budding foxgloves,
trailing his infectious atmosphere
through all the woods, and all the lochs
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poem by Jim Hogg
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Song - On Hamilton Road
It was down by the corner on Hamilton Road
On a cold Sunday night when we met long ago
And we tenderly talked about what might have been
And your kiss was so soft and your lips were so sweet
We were only eighteen; I was full of it then
When we sat face to face in old F O S 10
And to have and to hold you, to fall or to dance
To win or to lose you, my very last chance
(Chorus)
And the heavens held station above us that night
All the stars and the moon, they were waiting for signs
And you offered the dream I’d had since we were kids
And I threw it all to the cold winter wind
It was coming on Christmas, I was blind, I was young,
and though all that unfolded was just distance my love
You can still find a part of me chained like a ghost
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poem by Jim Hogg
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Winter in Portpatrick (song)
The snowflakes sit like little mountains
On the branches of the trees
By the harbour there the fountain
It must be icebound in this freeze
I'm not so far from home as you
New York city's cold at Xmas time
Though romance warms Fifth Avenue
The cold Atlantic sways between us
(chorus)
But Portpatrick lies so far from here
In the glen between the cliffs
Where breakers lash the lighthouse pier
And you and I once so gently kissed
And as I write I realise
How much is gone, and how much I still
miss
And from the harbour Irish voices
Over here in search of peace
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poem by Jim Hogg
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song - The Long Goodbye
I rarely thought of you
'til you finally broke through
I thought the story was complete
When we talked back in ninety three
I thought that was enough my love
But now love’s legionnaires have come
And Alison I’m thinking of
All the little things too much
Like how your d n a and such
Wove a spiders web of love and touch
into something almost glorious
But rarely could forget
That strange chemistry that crept
Between us, then entangled us
And didn’t understand at first
You know that I was crushed my love
By overwhelming chemicals
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poem by Jim Hogg
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