Poem: A July coastal evening, 2020

As time tucks the weary sun seaward down,
I walk out to dusk my well-frowned daytime concerns,
Letting the late light reason them lesser.

Above this virus-silenced road
Skylarks embroider the steady Western breeze
With invisible dexterity:
I wish I could hear in the narratives of their tapestries
The foreseen history of a hopeful future;
But these days, of course,
Certainty is an unsourceable commodity
Which no-one can obtain –
Not even using the ugly persuasions of wealth.

So I tell myself to belay all thoughts,
Except those which turn looking at the Atlantic’s sky
Into the thorough seeing of colours beyond skill, and
Recognising the impossible rightness of momentary high-spreading rays…

As for the peachcopper of distant mountain clouds –
Those must, far across Ceredigion, be glorying tall
Above somebody’s sheep-sloped sunset, full sixty miles away.

Loud only with stir of sea,
Beauty, so much, all around;
Yet only one other soul watching too –
And they well distant, surely unaware of me.