You have buried your mother and put
a memorial bench on a high hillside where
the wind blows sunsets straight through
and it’s always better to wear something warm.

You used to wind yourself in curtain turning taut,
look down at your feet, pirouette
as the fabric hugged you in.

the undershrub, shored up,
stakes its waspish claim,
its hereabouts

The gull
on the meadow
taps her little yellow feet
like a shovel-snouted lizard
dancing on a floor of lava

ask this place
ask the silver day
the steady horizon
the self-heal the buttercup
the hard fern in the ditch
ask the bee and the tormentil

Dogs in spring park light
pulled by intent wet noses
through luminous grass

What does it wake me to
as sky is hearthed by morning
and my home warms slow?

he dithers round the kitchen, lifts his 12-string from her hook,
strikes a ringing rasgueado, the echo bouncing back
emphatic from the slate flags and off the marble table.

This is how (I like to think) it begins:
night-time, August, the Devon cottage, where
the darkness is so complete . . .