Horizon

An edge of memory
Like a mountain in the distance
Separates heaven and earth.

My eye, the one unblinking
Behind sinew, nerve and blood,
The camera eye I see the world in,
Scans the landscape.

I have a place in mind:
A rock, a seashore and an ocean
Of waves to a shore in the small distance.

The broad sea-loch is rimmed
By sand-shallows and inlets
Where tiny islands and channels
Guide the tide-run
And the swell rises in uneven lines
From open sea to sullen beach.

Azimuth

Every landscape in its frame,
A moment-by-moment composition,
Textured life scratched on ground,
The green field, the birch-wood going upwards,
The tree-starved, muir-burned hills.

Light falls from another place
and runs like water from a clear sky.

Skyline

There is only beach and sea.

Sand for miles curves before beach houses
Elevated above hurricane and flooding tides.

Breakers come ashore like waves on any coast
Here, where the foam settles, the water is murky,
Warm, invisible to the touch.

Heartsong

A sound was bending in the wind
The half-music of rustling leaves
The quarter-notes of staccato rain
Hard on pavements, soft on grass,
On bare earth, drumming.

Stone

In my back garden
A fallen stone,
At last recumbent,
Sleeps on the ground.

In the indefinite past
Stones encircled this place,
Made it separate.