18th July 2021
There’s no one where to Honeysuckle Cove: it’s just a certain time of day.
Unpeopled hour, when the path’s
A leglick push-down through dewdroop cow parsley.
Descent into air scent-heavy as a theatre foyer:
Invisible silvertrickles from thicketed stream,
Shy birds loudly crystalline,
Pettythump of breezeless haven wavelets.
Flower fragrances, here where the sun feels lensed,
So strong they seem to impede movement;
Yet they do not ever cloy…
But why are humans so thoroughly
Lured, bewitched, almost enlusted
By the shape, too, of these blossoms?
Does the ancient urge to face-press first this bloom, then that
Value us as pollinators?
Sand, only fox-trittrotted.
As I soundless swim and sometimes dive
A silent swallow comes so low
That its wings must feel the surface’s up-press.
It passes, loops, re-passes, fearless close each time:
I must be disturbing some layer of humid sea-breath
To its feeding advantage.
Dried and dressed, I know to start to leave:
All too soon, this sun staying, here will become
A shriekery, a squealing place for brats,
A playground with rocky urinals
For loud and lazy litterers
Who just seek some sheltered sand beside the water
Not too far from parking for their oversized cars.
For now, though, while the Hyde hordes
Are still televisioning their fatty factory breakfasts,
I hope that Nature may consider me benign,
A Jekyll visitor, as I stoop to collect
Sugar-fogged polysomething bottles and grease-stink ship droppings
From the overnight tideline.
© Christopher Jessop 2021
