St Ives, Summer 1993

This is becoming an annual event
a celebratory ritual; another Cornish idyll.

In Topsham Devon
a job ends, the rain spills,
I paint all night,
sleep all day.

I think of you and the lady architect
hand-in-hand on the beach
looking for a present from St Ives,
a pebble-twin for your hearth.
Does the sea define your senses?
Do you think of me? The watery fish-woman
you never knew, dipping her paintbrush in the sea,
dreaming of bare white walls and empty rooms
touched by light, framed within, without.
But the dream fragments
knowing you (and she) are there
for the first sighting of the white picture palace
which is more mine than hers;
more my home than yours.

It is perhaps late afternoon or early evening
when you pay your grockle-dues to the sugar lady
who somehow seems familiar.
She will dominate of course;
Ben left Win for Barbara,
continuing with his sad cubist shapes
as Win's domesticity soared
and her palette expanded.
Does another Cornish sunset tinge
the sweet bright Herons with purplish hues?
Or does the falling dusk turn Turners to monochrome
as the chill cloud switches off the light until tomorrow?

Not knowing your preferences
or your shared visions
I am ready to leave you there,
hanging side-by-side
in the white sugar factory.

Now I can run
ozone-pissed and flying-footed
over the cliff's edge.
Down, down where rocks become pebbles
and pebbles become shingle.
To the sea, the sea, the seaweedy sea.

In Topsham Devon
the rain spills,
I write all night
and dream by day
I am a Botticelli venus
adrift in my shell-boat on a Cornish sea;
not drowning
but waving.