… is where my eye would fix you still,
marking the play of waves
in tranquil gaze across the curve of bay.
There, edge-bound broom and gorse
reach out their yellow-loaded limbs,
north to the sweeping height of chalk.
Turning south, with a sleight of hand,
dog rose tumbles over the groynes.
Like some figure of speech
a poppy hides in cow parsley.
Face to face, these your pictures hang.
We talk perspective: how sometimes
one must exaggerate a speck
to show a billowed sail.
How wrists strain with expectation of insight,
yet stay their execution,
from the blank page of beginnings
to our last dreamt stroke of colour.
(for Eileen Cassidy, 1928 - 2020)
i. 2021
South 66 October 2020
