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Owen Davis

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The Light Is Failing

It is evening.
Holiday makers are catching their yawns
In empty thermos-flasks.
Underfoot, the seaweed creaks.
A tiny scent of thyme, crushed under hooves,
Remembers itself and as soon again forgets.
On a straight stalk of fennel the bulb of a snail unfolds.

Clouds place their shadows around a warm hill,
Shutting the flock in till morning.
Snakes of wind-blown sand uncoil toward the sea.

A child’s wet footprints fade from one flat rock.
You might call that rock ‘the coastline dreaming’
— And you’d be right. As each sea-bird now
Is right to seek out sleep along its ledges.

A fat man hums himself into lager and laughter,
Sinatra’s song soon brushed aside by lighted lamps.

You were made, apart, into a human thing, to sigh,
And use your finger-tip to touch another’s sigh,
And bring it closer, so to staunch the wound of solitude,
As star after star set the sky afire.
The world is a thin line of green,
Separating mystery into two halves,
One of grief, another of joy,
Each untamed as the wolf.

We need the sun, we need the rain,
We need those stern companions.
We need the moth, the mumbled prayer,
We need the wing-beats of a swallow
On the purpling air.

For we are going to a place
So black and so quiet.
The named and the nameless
Bound there together
Into that self-enclosing,
Where goodbyes are forbidden,
Hellos are helpless.

Page(s) 8

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