22nd November 2021
With only one month to the true year end,
This has been such a sun-generous day;
Mundanely I did not waste it, colouring both washing lines
With clothes which all by afternoon
Had, in the sandstone wall’s red-glowed lee,
Cottoned that true scent of dry.
Down to the Sands, morning later, to swim
The greenbottle calm, underdiving happy as summer
In that autumnal clarity;
Then home with an inevitable, so regrettable,
Plastic payload –
But at least I had de-beached
A shoulderload of human folly.
This afternoon, realising yesterday evening’s firesided plans,
I started to carpenter a friend’s Christmas present
Mostly from Atlantic-gifted timber;
Now, early evening,
Knowing not to under-appreciate such a luckiness of light,
I’m up at the Beacon:
Back to the frost-rumouring wind
(A cheekpinch north-easter),
I marvel the sister-brother blazes of Venus and Saturn,
Southside low above redflash Skokholm.
So glad to have climbed up under this widehigh afterglow,
To have seen it suddenly flooded
With a sky-river delta of noctilucent clouds –
So much colder, they say,
Than the already sunlost Arctic
From which I imagine it to farly flow.
© Christopher Jessop 2021
