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Doug Sandle

The Summer Photographs

 

October mist now blurs the edges

where heather and rocks of quartz

marked out the dry paths of summer.

 

Indoors we take out the photographs

and laugh at our sun brown arms

posing awkwardly against a sea wall.

 

A sudden gusting of crows, caught by a flash of sun

swirls above a house and settles where tall elms

gather and mottle the sky.

 

Unposed, we lie lazy on sepia sand

watching the white boats slip along the sea,

or inland we doze on long lawns,

flower edged and palmed.

 

Our summer backdrops are gorse gold, heather,

fushia ferned farms and their sheep filled slopes.

In sight of the sea, valley fields ripen

with a billowing of summer grain.

 

Autumn mists blur the edges of memory.

Fields are now unfocused and cropped of harvest,

and in the foreground hedges, damp and ripe berries mould .

The unfixed texture of summer fades,

and seals in seas below are bellowing.