Following The Guidman’s Daughter with his poems on Mary, Queen of Scots, Marsh begins this new collection with a sequence exploring the life and times of John Knox, locating this ambivalent figure in the turmoil of the Scottish Reformation. Marsh moves via Kepler and Darwin into a celebration of nature, searching within our secular world to ‘find a language’ to render its mystery and concludes by touching on the great challenges we now face. Our striving to understand the nature of things hints, perhaps, at the possibility of a different kind of redemption.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• The Hammer and the Fire
  • Introduction
  • At St Giles’ Kirk
  • George Wishart
  • In the French Galleys
  • Berwick
  • By the House of Dun
  • St John’s Kirk, Perth
  • The Reformation of Lindores Abbey
  • Remembering the Field of Pinkie
  • Loss
  • Of the Monstrous Regiment
  • De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
  • In Thrall
  • Sisyphus
  • Bunty Wallace
  • Edinburgh, 1572
  • Gethsemane
  • January, 2009
  • Homecoming
• Origins
  • Origins
  • Oasis
  • Kepler’s Supernova
  • Cognition of Torture
  • The Mystery of Tides
  • Harmony of the World
  • Rainbows
  • The Watch
  • Lux
  • Lumen
  • Illumination
  • Light and Water
• Dancing after Bees
  • Thinking Path
  • Sundew – Loch Druidibeg
  • At Loch Crócabhat
  • Black and White
  • October 1st
  • At the Window
  • Marsh Thistle
  • Like to Like
  • Glen Esk
  • By the Sound of Eriskay
  • Stonechat
  • Valhalla
  • Kestrel
  • Voyager
  • Colonsay
  • Rain-washed
  • Dirt Tosser
  • Trickster
  • Belhaven Bay
  • Mummy
  • Beach at Smeircleit
  • Drove Road
  • Echidna by Three Pine Trees Quarry
• Handing On
  • Sun-dust
  • Lindisfarne
  • Jupiter
  • Wheelhouse – Cille Pheadair
  • Eco Demo
  • At the Royal
  • Singularities
  • Stroke
  • Inheritance
  • At South Lochboisdale
  • Dandelion Clock
  • Green Man in a Chapel
  • Sky Lines – Otterspool Promenade
  • For Charlotte
  • Walking
  • The Open Road
  • Art Lesson