Tonight's Poet Corner: Merciful Highlander

Merciful Highlander
by Belinda Roddie

When the spoon hits the back of the
palate just right, it tingles something
extraordinary, and the lamb lingers
on the spice spectrum just perfectly.

The Scotsman tries a new song out on a
younger lady who spins glass behind the
barber shop, her hands hot and sticky from the
outpouring of color in steaming streams. He

wants to impress her and take her to
Edinburgh, where the rain accompanies a
chorus against the high grass and dark
trees, and the stout is poured thick and
frothy from the tap down the old boy's
throat. And every time a

stranger walks in from Inverness,
there's a little skip beneath his
right shoe, and the pillar displaying the
preconceived end of the world leads to a
pub where the stew is offered as hot as the
Guinness is provided cold. And the Scot
eats the stew, and it lingers perfectly.