This Kind Of Sunlight

Out on the East Wall again, for a quick pre-dinner stroll with herself (Lola). Evening sun, as opposed to the brutish midday variety, the kind of sunlight that brings out the best in the honey-grey Victorian granite stonework, the kind that's friendly to walkers, lovers or recumbent readers. The kind of sunlight evoked in the last three lines (below):

Yellow

is what the gorse, in spring, bellows ––

Joseph Mallord William Turner’s breakfasts
on canvas, his Sunrise With Sea Monsters –––

a lemon for invisible ink or a measure of the old
heat, spiked with cloves ––

broad Gothic shafts flooding a darkened lounge-bar
dazzling the flat-screened soccer
to a dull roar ––

what gives to the city’s shut face
gratis, these armfuls of ore

and invites it to stretch, wallow.


from a short sequence, Primaries