30th August 2021
Did it wake us, the loudness of this calm?
Or might our unsleep,
That which minds our hearts and breathing,
Sometimes have a sense
Of moonbright, low tide, utter silence?
Feeling, surreal, of exploring life’s stopped film,
Four-dimensional walking within
An infinite arrested frame:
Whenever we slow to sight objects against the chubby moon,
No twig, leaf, finest even grass stem stirs.
Fairy-believers will have tonight crowded,
Thickly invisibled,
By dew makers of every speciality:
Mercury drop-makers, silverbead polishers,
Cobweb pearlers, fruit-glossers, stemgleam foilers.
Weather-stopped night, after a queue of gentle days:
Sea-sounds,
Now we’re near,
So hush,
They’re masked by our louder breaths.
Ah!
Movement sensible as we descend;
But no breeze, this: just the dense pour
Of sky-cooled field air,
Following the dry stream down to the bay.
Random, tonight’s phosphorescence, piskily petulant:
Unpredictable, those moments when
The quietswickle strokes
Parting us passage through this liquid glass
Out-star the cloudless dome of dark above.
Her modest mast-height white dot
Reflecting a steady bearing down the tideline,
A yacht is sleeping under Towers Point.
Walking ourselves dry, in whispers we agree:
Fearing punishment for disrespect, we’d never anchor there…
We picture Neptune,
Silently parting enough marred crystals
Birth-forged into a deepgloom link of chain:
Flaws enough for the sea to soon be wetly riffling
The logbook pages of even the most money-heavy vessel.
Up-path against that silent press of air,
Now more distinctly felt by cottonbrossed limbs.
Halt at pathmeet,
Where honeysuckle moonwoos scentiest,
Until lure of tea refuses resist…
So on again, with that flowery sweetlure now complemented
By the almost equally ripestrong scents of this barley –
This alegrain, this whiskycorn,
This maltgrass:
It might be cut and threshed, come afternoon.
© Christopher Jessop 2021
