Estuary

Does a dunlin hope for summer’s welcome,
Like memories, or a wished-for window,
The view from a river-boat under sail?
Gentle lapping replaces traffic-noise,
A gull breaks the silence,
In this world of ripples.

Things don't necessarily improve here,
They stand removed from our wishes, reflect
Sly quayside children, or clouds in the sky
To dog-walkers from nearby villages.
What can the future be?
Not a present surface,

Nor invention’s alloy, nor slick technique.
More a fairy-story than a rumour,
Exist to be believed-in, not proven,
Always the same, except for the teller,
Which may not matter much
Or may be everything.

This world of games within games within games,
With no definite aim, never-ending,
Of just so much and no more, meaningful
Because fleeting or difficult to say,
Looking across water
At countless shards of light.

Where the question “Why are we here?” lacks a point;
Since the birds consent to live without pride
Between broken branches, beneath willows,
To be warmed by the rising sun, governed
By this thing called daylight,
High in their clear dimensions.

A place of dwindling day, dusk before dark,
Not neon-lit in an everlasting night,
Vague in a child’s sense, yet so far away,
Cartographically flawed, yet true-seeming,
Magical, symbolic,
As likely as earth is.

Not a probability: a likelihood,
Not impractical: uncalculating,
Where tracts may be traversed in fancy’s flight,
With the leniency of wind and current,
This month’s news, not this hour’s,
Brought by second-class post.

A very great landlord can own the land
To either side, but only God or a King
Can plausibly lay claim to an estuary,
Or an invading army in retreat,
Descending a defile,
In defence of the old town.

Why do I feel, like them, a stranger, straying
Somewhere it’s still possible to be lost,
In hinterlands, close to a looming sierra,
Right as to ends, mistaken
On basic premises?

What can it mean to know the way back home,
Having been here, after taking bearings,
Where gulls can be frigates, and snow-white geese
Ship of the line, with mizzen sail unfurled?
If only more problems
Could be solved, and ethics

A “condition of the world,” not a choice,
That everybody always takes too far,
Like a new-year’s resolution to diet.
Battles of the heart, skirmishes of the mind
Go on everywhere, it seems.
A thousand years before,

Another April, with different blooms;
Who knows whose footsteps will have passed this way,
Furnishing the play with chance, happenstance,
Scenes as homely as the stuff of our lives?
Daily, they must leave us
Here with our own problems.


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