Three Figures in a Landscape (Poetry)

A skylark prompts that summer’s scene, recalling
in bursts of sound, ecstatic floating trills
that hovered high above us, rising, falling,
enchanting those much-painted Sussex hills,
the bird a small dark dot against a backdrop
of sea and sky and undulating chalk,
where breezes ran through grasses on the cliff top
and we, a scattered trio, took our walk.

First, the artist armed with watercolours,
strode ahead, his fervour drinking in
the brilliant white, the splash of yellow flowers,
the casual curve of land’s heat-heavy limb.
Next, the child bewitched by freedom’s singing,
skipped away, her dress a dab of blue
borrowed from the sky’s far corners ringing
with wild cadenzas, passionate and true.

Last, a figure spellbound into stillness,
frozen by the moment, soul in flight,
borne on perfect notes of aching shrillness
soaring through that bowl of liquid light.
Since when, my heart leaps up, relives sensations —
the tang of brine, a breeze that bowled along,
that feathered voice so full of sweet vibrations,
it lifts the weary spirit with its song.