A ship’s bright lights against low cloud –
it’s almost as if summer is ending too soon.
And it has done, or felt like it did, one year ago.
On long promenades where kids jump
and monuments are distractions
or remnants of sagas best forgotten,
we’d be walking out of the tunnel
that links the old town and the new.
I’m familiarly displaced in long trousers,
that shirt. That curt farewell
was everything that we had coming.
In the aftermath of another unexpected turn,
I’m the one who’s having to trace my way
above a seaside resort’s beckoning lights.
Newspaper splashes do their best to vie
with rolling-over waves at the shore.
We were out here, at some point,
escaping fierce, unfamiliar sun,
the news, a decision that came to us,
reported from all directions.
That shirt. That curt farewell.
That was everything we had coming.
