Edinburgh, first draft

I don't post my poetry often, indeed I don't write often, but I thought this one came out OK. Written over the past weekend for a good friend on the occasion of her birthday.

Edinburgh, first draft, 01/05/2010

for andrea.

Was it in Summer, when I lost myself among the graveyards?
The moss covered steps of Greyfriars green and gleaming.

Or was it someone's winter night along cobbled streets, 
where buildings wear a sharp puritan cut to their overcoats?
Hightailing it though the cold from one warm pub to the next.

Could it have been an Edinburgh Spring?
Beltaine roared along High Street in the gloaming
The burning processing smoking up the back of Calton Hill
A firebreather bellowed,
Gouts of flame framed faces.

If not in these times, 
then it must have been an Autumn loamy wet and windswept afternoon.
Sitting in the back of an Elephant,
last light out of the west washing against the castle.

It threaded itself, wound round us,
as we wandered Whitehouse Loan,
High Riggs, West Port, and up the Vennel Steps. 

In such moments that city passed beyond us being there,
 and into our dreams.