Midsummer night, late evening
A fish flicks like a young girl's hand
Testing the water's warmth. Dots fly
T o craziness, an angled bee
Bowls home in dusk, the biscuit air
Is carpentered, a summer car
The largest insect in the lane.
Puffy white roses hang half-seen.
A solid Barclay's Bank of coin
Ripples, a mint of silver birch
Safe in the sky. Maturing wine
Heats enzyme darkly in the loft.
A moth's wings make a tuning-fork
In odour of night-scented stock.
The pub's piano whorls like smoke
Notes down the valley, one tall oak
Drapes gathering curtains to outwit
Flies' acrobatic particles. The tart
Redcurrant tingles, mouse and cat
Accost, half-light, half-dark, not night.
The low hills visibly cohere
As centuries tonight. One day
A year these extra minutes' air
Feel haunted; dark all other weeks
They stay on now to hear and see
Some sign across the skyline, one
Strange time-gap beckoning all of time
As yet unfilled, late June, to come.
We don't know what to say, we seem
Wordless night-people in a dream
Of someone else's, dreaming us
And mixing night with daybreak. We
Move grass antennae, fingering air
Like Pucks and Oberons, a low
Flower lifts a blossoming lens to see
Outside. A.D. five thousand heaves
In range tonight. Will part of us
Be, some place at that time? It whirrs
A thought in me, yet even this
Day fades and sinks. A late fish leaps.
Page(s) 73-74
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