Come Late In The Day To This Shore

Come late in the day to this shore the tide out
The sky the colour of stone as you then whisper
‘Not much of a choice when the alternative is silence’
Feeling salt bite feeling it freeze beneath a thin mist

Now waiting gathered at this sand’s edge
Where each rock’s a fusion an echo a line in this sand
A new way of describing something that is no longer there
On this late December morning

When the mist has just returned from the river
And when the river is just about to return to the sea
Towards its own indifference of more snow now falling
In these shallows in these pools

An evacuation of rocks and stranded pieces of wood
Of patterns of ice and nets of frost
And a horse now burning at full gallop
Along all that remains of the rest of this beach

Now The Numinous

In the cold air of your absence I now stand
Bare feet on wet sand

Snatching at flies stumbling against my face
Then surrendering to the sun

To your body creased carved carefully into mine where daylight has dredged
Traces of salt and then silence now taking apart this morning

This horizon defined by forgetting about that which no longer exists
Fibres of what is almost glass now caught between each toe

Each wave a distraction each version of each breath now the numinous
Now the weight of its own asking

A new way back towards fields fired and hills revealing in their silence
No obvious way through

Just a flash of white and an owl its cry cut from dreams transfixed
By the unreal uncertainty of a life lived elsewhere

Imagining a door imagining it permanently locked
Inventing a new language inventing a new name for faith