This month while in Argyll, my current muse stole in under cover of darkness. Wet weather had thankfully kept me indoors reading, which was good as I'd gone there for solitude and to focus Then, on the last day, I woke with this poem, already formed and floating in my head.
To Sydney Graham
There are no owls here
Only seas of hill and rain
Where cuckoos inhabit
My silent night-rhyme nest.
You lade my dreams with words
And moor them gently
At my shell-like
Before I wake
Listen - is it really you?
Hear - with me in this lonely abstract
Cuckoo-calling place
Where I sense your voice
In the swish of birch-shadow
In the whisper of moth-wing
Shhh, Shhh, you say,
I am trying to be better