Points West

for Kevin and Eve

When the street has gone all so quiet
except for the police car that whizzes up
and down at the same time every night –

when the timbers jolt and the radiators click-click
and the action of the clock gets ready to strike –
I stumble across a blustery waste ground,

a cliff face, a dozen streets of little
houses, under a full moon, blinded by
the light of a door that’s been left open,

church bells clanging at six in the morning,
the first train haring off to points west,
and, from the garden that edges a misty lake,

wind chimes accompany my ‘going before me’,
to the terrace overlooking a splendid sea,
where the kids hunt in rock pools or dive

headlong into the uplit swimming pool,
the smoky hills behind and beyond us
nestle the rich and no-longer famous –

ex-colonials on retreat and contemplatives –
but in the bulky containers moving so slowly,
stowaways crouch for pockets of air.

I am off again, daydreaming of marauding
tree wasps with their ghastly undercarriages,
cicadas ringing their nightly changes,

the high-pitched whine of a mosquito,
my eyes peeled on dolphin-watch,
while they, like dancers, wait in the wings.