Como Echo

(A memory sparked by Eddie Gibbon's poem 'Como')

I heard the church bell
from a hill I'd climbed
to try to put my world
into perspective.
Pure note indeed, echoed vertically
down to the lake, into my preoccupation.

I realised the height I'd reached,
looked down at lakeside houses
bright and tiny in the August sun,
the great fluid blue expanse
cross-rippled by the taxi boats,
soundless engines inching them on
to the next basking village.

With the sharpest of my eye
I saw a young man dive into the water,
disappear, then break the surface;
the church bell struck its last -
I wondered if he heard -
wished that I could dive and join him
right down the hillside, back to earth,
out of the depths of this lofty, lonely world.