27th August 2021
Midnight well past, sky clear…
Full moon astern painting mutecolour a-plenty,
We seem to light-sail down the dewy barley
With the Plough fine off our port bow
Pointing Polaris high over hazeglimmer Saint Davids.
Wordlessly we pad the beach.
Twelve hours ago, or another twelve hence,
Laughtered with stand-paddlers, buoyancied bobbers,
Surf game players, swimmers, divers, riders and board-lollers…
Now, unfriended waves break on childless sand:
No busy hands or feet marking, mining, piling, moulding.
Southwards, tideline on right,
The Moon’s wet strand reflection keeps up fastflicker with us:
Just as the Sun along a parallel river
Paces every speeding train.
As its still air call to our window had promised,
Here’s bodyable surf;
Though, because the August full is lowly bright,
Some time take even our well-nighted eyes
To discern the best to try;
But when we do judge well,
Such elating tumblerush through fizzing glitterfoil!
Selfishly, glad now of the beach just ours;
But sad, too, that never on many night swims
Do we come down and find a family:
Children brought to sea-play in starsparkle,
Find themselves braceleted, navelled, necklaced by priceless phosphorescence.
To swim under Infinity, out deep but safe beyond the breakers:
There, to starfloat in our galaxy before diving paleglimmer below.
Returning, to skin the embrace of moonsurf,
Then dance the flawless strand, allover feeling
The dark cliffs’ still-ebbing dayheat…
Finally, afterpleasure
Of slowmelt chocolate squares on seashiver salty tongues:
Too long kicking surf-edge spray
For the love of lunar rainbows!
Night it needs, for children – and parents – to learn
The true meaning of Really Quiet;
And thus, as we have,
Surprise a tidal fox about its shore-snoutings –
Gasping wonder at its sand-silent streaking gallopaway.
And, at last, the wellyglump home up a dewshiny path,
Moon ahead almost too bright:
Cricket zickets mimicking Grandpa winding his watch,
Heavyhead barley malting young nostrils
With premature breakfast thoughts.
So good, surely, to gift any child that modest boast:
‘We went night swimming!’
For how many expensive-holiday classmates
Could true that claim…?
Followed, with appropriate nonchalance, by
‘And in the lane home, an owl overtook us, just above our heads –
Quieter than nothing at all!’
Dissolved by the grass mist
Like an ink-drop in a stream.
© Christopher Jessop 2021
