Tilia

She dances on the beach in the rolling mist, 

Glistening legs

A small breath inside a giant exhale 

Every stranger she encounters 

is a promise of play

I watch on, as if given a chance 

to visit myself in a different childhood

Where I still trust

Where I move towards, not away

Awareness grows up and out 

like sweet pea tendrils on a cottage trellis in Solva

Until I have the point of view of the sun

A large pendulum marking small units of human time 

Cosmic arch above stone arches 

The past sings a Vierne lullaby in St David's Cathedral

But it is the young playing for the old 

Role reversal 

That marks the fall of civilisation

The sign of the apocalypse

will not be famine and pestilence

but the gaping mouths of 

ostentatiously ornate organs

silent in empty churches 

When there will be no master, apprentice

Nor congreation

We will have forgotten what the score was

Or what we worshipped in the first place

We will water our gardens

Rendered restless and mute

Like the last speaker of a dead language 

who cannot convey the way 'lime' - 'tillia' - 'tei'

invokes all at once 

tree and its blossom, 

The specific scent of summer,

The movement of the wind's visibility cloak 

longing and mourning 

a surge of the heart 

and a burial.