Karen Solie

Surprised on returning to find the flat flooded with light. Merciless, evaporative, even when overcast, and, as the solstice neared, sanctimonious in its imperative to productivity. An expert with his pen-light wondering how you let it get this bad. That tone. We were out all day in the clarity of errors that had multiplied into reality. Extra weight exposed by the indignity of...

Like a king from a promontory the kestrel presides from an updraft, an array of barely perceptible movements sustaining balance and attention, and the woodmouse, the shrew, the secondary characters, know whose watch they’re under. There are no

bystanders among them. The razorbill’s piety winters at sea, is secular and medium-sized, black above, white below; while, frontloaded...

Endless heritage beneath the heavenly soundshed. Jet-black amphiboles. Ten varieties of scones in Elie. Giant centipedes and petrified tree stumps of the Devonian fossil record. Pyrope garnets at the foot

of the Lady’s Tower aren’t quite rare enough to acquire significant market value, much like the self-taught experts in autobrecciation and exfoliation weathering who work their...