Aberdeen

My city’s built on granite and petroleum
Reservoirs, all of us in one way or another
Touched by the industry, from the
School parents to the boys
With accents from Alaska,
Canada, South Africa. We wore kilts
And sang Gershwin in the Music Hall
And the men from offshore clapped the loudest.

I lived by the hospital and
Some nights the windows shook
With helicopters, travelling from the ocean
Or the highlands. I wondered
What it must have been like
That night, how many submersibles,
Rescue boats, diver paramedics, would have
Disappeared into the distance.

We would go play in Hazelhead Park and
Greet the usual characters: the frog bins,
The easy maze, Robert the Bruce and his spider,
And three men, in helmets and boots
Standing in a rose garden.