Written September 6th 2023, remembering a night swim early on September 2nd
What makes them so irresistible, those whispers of the night low tide
Which draw me from my bed after only three hours’ sleep?
Moonshadow pacing ahead like a companionable dog,
I path north besides the head-bowed barley
Through which an unseen animal
Rustles carelessly loud in the windless gloom.
Well I pace, until the honeysuckle bank;
Pausing there to stroke those dewy blooms,
I’m surprised to scent their sandalwood richness almost gingery.
As I step past the bedrock pools,
That cloudless old face shines up bright as a sunken sovereign.
Onto the sands, printless as always – and vast, for we’ve spring tides now;
A crisp small surf, loud in this stillness.
I won’t be in long, shan’t go far;
However I must swim out to the chance of phosphorescence…
None, not even in the moon’s lee of me;
But, ample compensation, leafsilver flashes
Whenever a swish of mine mooncurls the surface.
The only occasion I run, these days:
Drying circles all about the perfect sand,
Steadypaced under the harvest stars.
As I climb away high cloud comes over,
So slight the light barely dims.
Its patterning surely tells complexities otherwise not known:
Ripples of temperature, pressure corrugations,
Braided windspeeds.
Just one aircraft in all this time:
Lucky, you might say, considering the weight of transatlantic traffic;
But I silently curse its intrusion, which should be outlawed…
And, yes, I can say this; for I don’t fly, and shan’t ever again.
I gumboot home:
Musing the possibility or not of painting by moonlight,
Pondering St Bruno gorse smoke on the southeast breeze.
Remembering that later this morning
I must put out Bramleys for our post lady –
Who loves them; and all her grandchildren too,
Whom I can picture
Plucking each whitebright new segment from the point of her slicing knife.
© Christopher Jessop 2023
