How good and many are the days of your life,
though they seem the same they never are;
and though you have never been less than two steps
beyond yourself, unable to fix your grip on the passing world,
your heart must surely break when you remember home
and the once heard cry of a corncrake as you clamber down
the grassy dunes to the sea, a stray thorn scraping your anorak,
its stylus whispering galled histories to the tide below.
There, in the remembered light of irrevocable promises
you will dream of ceremonies, the priest who married you,
his solemn ghost swaying at the front of the church;
and you will summon the memory of irresistible gravities
when you were the earth and she was the moon and the sea:
she who would drink the infinite tide and drown the sun;
and she whose steadfast love you could not spurn.
Copyright © John Murphy 2012
