At the field’s end, visible from the kitchen window,
the gate gives onto the coast path. Beyond are
sea-wrack, rock-pools where anemones curl;
colours opal and royal blue, glowing as oils.
The lagoon shelters a lone barnacle goose, inhabiting
a world different from the screaming gulls, salt
vastness in their wake, breaking on the raw
shambolic stones that mark the shore.
But all this is out there. The gate neatly divides; in
here there are rabbits in the early dusk, hawthorn
and eglantine, the exact tracks of mowers, a picnic
table, a Frisbee unheeded on the lawn.
Last night I dreamed of the gate, so neat,
conventionally ordered, firm in its place, yet
now it was ajar, hinges contorted to
allow room for those which come through.
Phantom forms, faintly visible; dancing
creatures of the sea, some of them, claws
and feelers pulsatingly akimbo,
grotesquely out of place on the dimlit green.
Behind them the others, pale shapes
enveloped in their own dark, drawn up from
the sleeping places to play awhile and sing of
the unquiet worlds that coil beyond the gate.
