Patricia Aves

Song for Old Leigh

Sunset
like knife light
icing and seeping
like silver and mercury
spreading to grey
and slipping and splitting
the evening, the edging,
keeping the darkness
and danger away.

Here in the shore light
boats shimmer in sunset
glimmer in marshland,
they shiver but stay,
till the grey water sucks them
and licks them and laps them
and lifts them and shifts
them and takes them away.

They sail in the sunset
from sea light, to far light,
distant the silver,
now dying grey.
Moonlight, the shy light
soft skimming the blue night
gilding the twilight
and ending the day.