Poem of the Week: “Whin” by Alan Gillis

“Whin,” the opening poem from Over Here by Alan Gillis, is an evocative experiment in atmospheric language and natural imagery. In this textured inventory of a perhaps moody and mercurial, perhaps spectacularly bright, landscape, the poet places a speaker in the tension between the light and the dark, between wild living and looming ends: “Aye, this is me. Here.”

—Mary Rhodes, WFU Press Intern

Whin

Ruined greens, thistle-pokes, here I am
lost again under grey Y-front skies
where tired mustard splotches of gorse,
nicotine-stained shocks of furze,

bristle in a ring like Aunties circling
at a wake with tea-leaf teeth muttering,
‘All that is eternal fears fulfilment.’
Then the sky splits open in a flash-flood

of sun glare and the whin bursts
marigold-gleam, lemon-dazzled honey
as white-green winged butterflies
ripple over purple swaying heather.

Aye, this is me. Here. Among fuzz
blossom, thorn blooms, wild coconut
whiffs, a far-gone goat bleating,
‘Dew on the grass, light in your eye!’

—Alan Gillis, from Over Here (2026)