A POEM with a feel-good factor to start the week. The narrator is Keith Murray of Aberdeen, who has contributed regularly to this column since it started 20 years ago.

CHINESE TAKE AWAY

The light from the Chinese take-way

spills onto the cracked pavement

frosted over now

sparkling in delicate yellow

the pretty and diminutive girl politely

takes my order from my broad Scots dialect

writes it down in crisp black Chinese letters

on a pad of pure white rice paper

already there is a seam of truth

immediate in the warmth

during the time it takes

to present me with my meal

the phone rings and she talks

writes a large order for the children’s hospital

ten or fifteen minutes in this tiny place I feel

I am vestibuled towards some fuller understanding

of the growing and deepening night

the dancing snowflakes in the shut out wind

here where beauty has been discovered

and all must surely now be safe and sound.