“‘Where now security, what to trust?’/The cycle of an invisible moon has/Our harbor in its force, another period/Has begun: the existing limits to be tested.”
Ripple by ripple, the thin, shallow lip
Of the incoming tide encroaches
On this estuary of the harbor, hiding
The muddy sand, the stones—the glint
Here and there of shell or rubbish—hiding
All under a gleam of blue and white:
The reflected sky carried as a film
On the smooth undulating corrugations.
So slight to see, here at its lapping edge,
This little curl of water—less than a wave—
Advances and retreats, and each advance
Gains ground on that before, extending
The covering colors of the floating sky,
Merging the enclosure of what were
Heavens with the commonalities of
Earth, narrowing the ground of habitation.
As one encroaches, the other recedes
Under the false immense above—nothing
True—the sand and its objects rising
And falling in their liquid refraction:
“Where now security, what to trust?”
The cycle of an invisible moon has
Our harbor in its force, another period
Has begun: the existing limits to be tested.
Harold Jones is a New Zealander, educated at Cambridge University, where he was awarded a scholarship to read English. For 20 years and, more recently, another ten, he sent no work for publication, preferring to work at its development. His work has appeared in major poetry journals in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and has won the attention of leading critics and poets, among them, Ted Hughes: “I hear a real voice, a real movement of mind cutting through resistances.” Recent work appears in Merion West and VoegelinView.
