8th September 2021
In this cidertawny fade, is that Venus low west above our lane?
Their colours lost for the night,
Its motionless fretwork hedges are moth-danced,
While midges smudge about the fine nib inkery
Of seed-shed grass stems.
The barley field is now slab-gloomed
With monolith bales big as henge stones…
If only, silently overnight,
One could re-arrange them:
Uprighting many, then lintelling a top ring!
Above Ramsey, scruffy Sienna brushwork
High and far-reach north-east:
Old air trails,
Tangling maybe a failed weather front
Which proved no match for this heaty high pressure.
While we loll the path gate
Occasionally clappicking its holdfast,
The sky fastly stars itself beyond count:
Up there, too, tireless satellites
Dot rapidly Devonwards down our shared longitude.
Somehow, spontaneously, all the crickets agree:
Now’s the time!
Thus, homeward, we seem to hear the clockworking
Of each heavenly body’s escapement,
Regulating its passage across the oversea blue.
Thus we wonder:
Is, out there, one single Atlantic mariner – or aeronaut –
Who’s tonight with chronometer, sextant, and printed tables
Affixing their position
With un-electronic certainty?
© Christopher Jessop 2021
