Ullswater

A quick dash to catch the last light after another difficult work day and before making supper for friends driving up from London today.
The sunlight catching the water reminded me of the Nicholson lines '... blinded not by the dark but by the dazzle.' ... which had come to mind with yesterdays blip as well and which also form the epitaph on Nicholson's grave in Millom churchyard.

Sea to the West - Norman Nicholson

When the sea’s to the west
The evenings are one dazzle -
You can find no sign of water.
Sun upflows the horizon;
Waves of shine
Heave, crest, fracture,
Explode on the shore;
The wide day burns.
In the incandescent mantle of the air.

Once, fifteen,
I would lean on handlebars,
Staring into the flare,
Blinded by looking,
Letting the gutterings and sykes of light
Flood into my skull.

Then, on the stroke of bedtime,
I’d turn to the town,
Cycle past purpling dykes
To a brown drizzle
Where black-scum shadows
Stagnated between backyard walls.
I pulled the warm dark over my head
Like an eiderdown.

Yet in that final stare when I
(Five times, perhaps, fifteen)
Creak protesting away -
The sea to the west,
The land darkening -
Let my eyes at the last be blinded
Not by the dark
But by the dazzle.