"From Up There You Cannot See Who Left the Gate Open"

Ferdinand Quinlan walks to the shop at ten past nine. Navy anorak zipped to the chin. A tartan trolley with one wheel that turns the wrong way.

He spent thirty-four years above the Clyde. He knows it from eleven thousand metres, in cloud and in snow.

"From up there you cannot see who left the gate open," he says.

The gate is green iron, outside a tenement garden with three bins and a dead fern. It swings a little in the wind. He looks at it the way he once looked at a dial.

He buys milk and a roll. He walks home the same way.

The gate is still open. So, on the way back, is his left hand.