Ruchill

They scour the neighbourhood clean
of the last tenement rows,
the communal closes and tiled stairways.
Red sandstone and cobbled lanes
bulldozed to piles of rubble.

Cleared for our rows of ticky-tacky houses
and postage stamp lawns
where we raise our children behind high fences,
keeking out for that missing something.

I sneak in darkness to liberate
the granite setts for my allotment beds.
I read my future in these Glasgow faces,
heavy gray or freckled with colours
that deepen in the rain.

Calling this city my home
is a weighty dream I cannot cast aside
or let them haul away.
I retain a fragment of her hard history
as it is crumbled away
and build a wall for my daffodils.