Wilderspool Causeway

after Peter Robinson

Is it clear or hazy at Dinton Pastures
in a verdant May with dappled shade in patches
over ‘Enigmas of Departure’ at a café table?
Everywhere the trees are Larkin’s unresting castles.
A heron stands on stagnant water like a model,
then turns its head while a larger lake glimmers
around stranded panels facing up to a star.
They call it a ‘hard relate’ if you truly understand.
For me it’s the heat haze with everything silenced
by glass, passing inaccessible places, scrubland
below the horizon, glimpses of in-between fields
from a train’s confinement, a sense of lostness
in presences of space assuaged by new departures
and blessings of latitude to the sky returned.