Glasgow: The Dear Green Place Poem by Sheena Blackhall

In Glasgow's Fossil Grove, Victoria Park
There are trees twice as old as dinosaurs.
A unique earth heritage site

The city's underground system's
The Clockwork Orange
Tick tock- tick the earthy smell of tunnels

The Glasgow Tower is the tallest fully rotating
Freestanding structure in the world, but it has problems
Lift failure! If you're religious, pray

Why not gallop into The Horseshoe Bar
The longest continuous bar in Europe?
Yeeha!

This is the home of the Old Firm,Celtic and Rangers
Orange, green, and blue
And high and dry on the banks of the River Clyde
SEC Armadillo, an ant-eater sliced in half

This town's been home to tobacco lords, slavers, shipbuilders
Engineers, navvies, the Trongate steeple bells

This town holds St Valentine's remains in a Gorbal's kirk
And Sir Roger the Elephant, stuffed

This town has opened its doors
To Ireland, Lithuania, Italy's Hokey Pokey men
China, Bangladesh, India, Syria, Jews escaping pogroms
It has a heart as deep as the Mariana Trench
Its stomach loves its curry

Sashay along "The Style Mile", Merchant City
Window shop in Sauchiehall, Argyle Street
Cross the Squinty Brig across the Clyde
Walk under the Heilanman's Umbrella

Nip into Glasgow's Necropolis
With a statue of John Knox at the summit
Devil's-coach horse beetles dwell there
They feast on the flesh of sinners
Step under the Bridge of Sighs but
Watch out for the Gorbals' vampire

Artists, poets and actors grew in these fertile streets
Gray, Rennie Mackintosh, Morgan, Alan Spence

The wee screen boxed its heroes
Rab C. Nesbitt, Taggart, Tutti Frutti
River City,Chewin' the Fat,Still Game
Laughed withBoyle, and Ferguson, Billy Connolly
The big screen took to Glasgow's own Stan Laurel

Let's not forget:

The Tongs, the Young Toon Toi,
Housy Mad Sqwad, the Reid Street Dickies
Shettleston Tigers,Tollcross Wee Men,
The Drummy, Bal-Toi,and the Provvy

(No portrait is complete without its warts)

A city's soul is bared by its public sculptures:

The Duke of Wellington, wearing his traffic cone
Homeless Jesus statue stretched out on a bench
Gorbal's Girl with a Rucksack, coming or going?
Monument to maternity, a giant nappy pin
Clyde Clock, striding out on robot legs
Winchers, forever locked in a lovers'clinch
As Proud as….a naked man
With an underwhelmingly small wee willie winkie