Tricks Of Light (Poetry)

All afternoon we drove into the sun,
December drizzle distant in the dawn,
as motorway unwound its miles among
the idle fields, disused and winter-worn.

Pylons strung pale necklaces of steel,
glinting in long geometric lines,
incongruous, their skeletons revealed
in contrast to drab, unobtrusive pines.

Colour deepened, shadows stretched their grey,
a pastel sky soaked up thin sunlight shed,
and wounded clouds hung patient as the day
grew weaker and its vivid pigment bled,

extravagant, in swiftly blending spills,
gathering the bold vermilion left,
spreading dissolution on the hills
and staining our horizon with its death.

The corners of the sky began to curl,
turned indigo as early evening rolled
a fragile moon - an insubstantial pearl -,
ethereal, her milky face ice-cold.

Below, the ragged suburbs blurred to brown
silhouettes with scattered points of light,
as switches flicked throughout the dusk-filled town,
its grubby walls concealed by witching night.

The river threw a swatch of watered silk
flecked with silver slubs - a random weave
of winter tides that patched a twilight quilt
and wrapped the gloomy docks and wind-chilled quays.

Suspended high above our westward view,
the bridge swung like a cradle draped with stars,
and mud flats gleamed wet lengths of smooth slate-blue
outshining the pale stream of passing cars.

The estuary, transformed by tricks of light,
looked magical - a Disneyland disguise -,
the towers of the steel works twinkling white
as fairy castles charmed before our eyes...

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Daybreak dragged her threadbare skirts outside
our window, like a vagrant, unemployed,
and watched from careless shorelines at low tide,
night's grand illusion ruthlessly destroyed.