Song at Drumholm

My liveliest self, I give you fair leave in these windblown weathers, heather-hearted and human and strange, to turn every blackberry corner of yesterday’s summer. The robin, singing her love-me-forever, kiss-catch-clutch-in the heather blues, sings tide flow and autumn’s turning and white winds folding. Cattle along all hedges wind winter into their frosty breathing, their slow eyes dreaming barn, bullock, and fodder under all hedges. But sea cave and sycamore tell us the world is wider than weather. Blackberries darken the corners I turn, and gold seas turning darken, darken. My liveliest self, my other, Godspeed on our farings. The bronze path at evening.            Toward summer, then.                        My hand, your hand— as if first meeting.