A poem by Rupert Loydell.
‘Summers make their own poems;
sometime you think that they haunt you.’
– Summer Reflections, Harry Martinson
Sometimes the tide slips out of sync
with the way we live. Too late
to sail or row in the evenings –
it gets dark before the water arrives
and the pub is tempting and warm.
Sometimes the seasons slip out of sync
with the way we want to live. We end up
in the dark, reading The Wishing Chair
out loud and wondering where we could
go if only the world was as magical.
Sometimes our lives slip out of sync
and we are left all alone, looking at
a flattened and vanishing perspective,
nights interrupted by a 4 a.m. fox,
snout buried in the lawn, oblivious,
for sometimes time slips out of sync
with the way we are expected to live
and conduct ourselves in the suburbs:
we make our own poems and paper
over the cracks between granite slabs.
Sometimes everything slips out of sync.
A waxwing flies over the stone wall,
a branch drops from the oak tree,
the shadows hardly move. There is
no wind and no end to the moment.