I Am In The World

When I glimpse the sea down across the fields

To my left, [I’d thought it would be my right]

My blood beats faster as landscape yields

Up its hope, scatters the shadows of night.

Apart from meadows and sky I’m alone,

But they breathe as I breathe, promise me,

While chalk gleams on the banks like bone,

The world will show me how I can be free.

Now as my bike bounces back down the lane

Towards where the sea and land agree,

The wheat glitters with harvest gold again

And I own everything I can see.

Brief these moments, blessed in what they bring

I am in the world. This is everything.

From ‘A Bench for Billie Holiday: 70 Sonnets’ [to be published by Valley Press October 2018]