Ice cube, sliding

Ice cube, sliding

That day began with, dear god!

Shocking gasp and green

plunge in the pool eighteen degrees and dropping

four lengths in, stately, become miraculously warm

and you and I in fluent chat

plus birds, a buzzard to your left?

Doves dainty dipping, pink feet

curled on the edge

then to market, landscape definitely crisping at the edges,

autumnal, though you talked of rust in the chestnuts

but also feathery fields, asparagus, waving

and one or two hectares of sunflowers,still zinging in full song.

Next to the lake, a picnic in the shade

and afterwards those scarlet dragonflies

with various Clouded Yellows on the flit and flutter.

At home another thirty lengths, soothing dip

before our rendezvous with a poet, quiet Irish tones 

in the still white clean white room

strange images, a black moon

and Robert Frost he gave me,

that ice cube, sliding on its own melt

who knew the genesis, the where from? Wither?

Watch in wonder

see the poem formed.

10th September, 2012, Hounoux, for Clare

(The poet was Matthew Sweeney. He told me that Robert Frost said a poem is a block of ice sliding on its own melt. Subsequently I read that RF also said ' Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words' )