John Welch
Three Letters
1
A sheepish glitter, sunrise and surmise —
Stout birds hither, on the alarmed lawn. Clouds
Are full of surprises, pale in the lovely blue.
Chockfull I'm silent, an accident, a street
That sounds take refuge in. Today I play
At being memory. Clocks stick. The sentence
Jerks into being. And being here is
The one thing literal, an accident whose consequence
I try to read with amazement. The sun
Is an ear listening. It sucks me into the sky
And all the sea a grey jelly
Is spread with buttery sunlight.
2
The enormous loop of estuary, then spiky terns
Furious in the wake of retreating water,
Hills magnified by distance and the sand's lens.
Reaching the treeless headland, we bathed in the long waves.
Ahead of us there stood a flattish island,
Remarkable, and the blue hills floating, empty.
These are the Hebrides, and this is the Atlantic.
We are alive and well / recognition — strut of the world.
All reasoning is merged into this seamless air.
Our bodies, coffined in ocean, drag like curtains.
3
Bare surf, and here my
Remarkable knuckles —
Here is the mind
Examining its milk
Alive! The world, its
Voices on the sunny stairs,
Gratitude in the cool wood
Then thunder and scuttle —
Chopping surging hysterical
Mouths and their yellow laws —
This terrible sunshine that
Sits on the page like a monument.
Page(s) 129
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