Summer Solstice

Bourne Mill Pond, Colchester 1987
Might all visitations be as unimposing
as this one: thistledown rides above
grey glass — buoyant, never settling;
the wisp of nothing that I pluck gloves
a seed. Under clouds, moving and still,
the pond is disguising itself as a forest:
a moorhen swims through great trees, ripples
branches, glides into a tremor the sky's depth.
Summer is late this year, or may not come —
of small moment to the stout thrush singing
into the mothering wind, unimaged
by the water's slime-and-silver. Its song
circles out through hosts of leaves, each one
a green unwhispering tongue — aerial, earthbound.