ON HOLIDAY

You cannot measure a summer
In yellow-hammers.
With their slightly fuzzy sound
Of warmth and well-being
They linger over into autumn:
Summer is shorter than that -
We need something sharper.
What is there to define
Rare hours of sunshine
As you lie under a cliff,
Legs perhaps crossed,
But the grasshopper calling?
I know nothing braver:
A wet season's waiting
For the right time to sing -
If it can be called singing.
It is rarer than that even -
A controlled virtuosity
Of impossibilities,
A noise thrown off with insouciance
And then finished
As the cloud comes again.
Bizarre limbs evolved
For bizarrer purposes,
Patience, skill and tact,
A sense of the dramatic -
This may be my last performance,
The right moment of sun
And this holiday-maker is at it,
His recognition clicking in your ear
And then done.

Alasdair Aston

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