Between Culver and Dunnose …

… 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