Summer
Sunk beneath the hot midday, the bay affirms its integrity –
some sense of filigreed coherence held fast against the tide.
The sky’s unreachable view shifts light from nowheres
into orchid and celandine, as form shows itself pristine
yet mute to its own meaning. A collie’s sea-shook rainbow
sheds inertia onto sand and we unpack the day’s intention.
Is it for this we live, our boy hacking fiefdoms from the air
in the haze of an afternoon, while his first dog drops
driftwood at your feet? The moment is its own country
slipping past thought, or what passes for thought, towards
this quantum of Summer; can no more be touched than
the sky’s endless blue yet is real somehow, somehow
meets its own need to find equivalence in these rocks
and us and now. Here, under plough-line corduroy,
on this horseshoe strand below the Mohr’s green pelt,
the landscape holds us fast within the ambit of its mood;
finds design in the deep impasto of a hot afternoon, as I mark
the freckles plotting their way up the pale skin of your arm.