Poem of the month - January 2006

The Plot Unfolds When I looked out It had stopped snowing and no-one had made a mark on the day. The schoolkids passing through left a small preamble in the snow and shopgirls, glumly following their feet, made little dents with their shoes till the street read like braille. Half an hour passed. A man shouldered his briefcase and stamped along, each print an improvement on the last, and the road ran like a ledger. Three pinstriped men underwrote it, a girl running in high heels punctuated it, and at the very end, when I was guessing the story, some dogs added the very small print. By Hugh McMillan, Tramontana (Dog and Bone, 1990) Poem supplied by the Scottish Poetry Library

About the poet Hugh McMillan was born in 1955. He lives in Penpont, and works in Dumfries as a History teacher. He has written three major collections of poetry, the last being Aphrodite's Anorak (Peterloo). He has received four Scottish Arts Council bursaries, and his work - short stories and poetry - has been widely published, both in the UK and abroad. Hugh's last pamphlet, After the Storm, was a winner in the 2005 Smith/Doorstep competition.