CONCLUDING
A false dawn lights a silver
pewter line along the High Weald edge,
iron-black in its waiting. A first, too early,
throstle's liquid notes melt
some hardness in my heart, until silence
shatters the world and it is night again.
And when the sun does rise,
sun of the long shadows; the moon
still hangs full in its roundness, a porthole
with cambric curtains closed needing privacy
in these waning hours. The sky, cloudless,
pale blue, augurs well for a walk on the Downs.
Clean air to clear the head to see the way forward
along the sunlit shimmering
silvery path to the end: another beginning.
