Beauty Spots

Here was us so sick and the weather so well
that we ventured out: one coughing boy;
one sneezing girl.

With our tentative aches in our mobile incubator with ready brakes, to the beauty spots, better seen slow,
on days like this when there's nowhere else to go.

Days with swooping gulls and slicing yachts
the only whites on our blue beauty spots.



A Tui tar black in a lacy tree,
whistles thrice, then a sharp coughing crack,
clearing her throat in sympathy.

A Kingfisher on the bow of a boat
stops high and dry in Little Shoal Bay,
looks thoughtfully out, nothing stands in its way.

Ice cream sweetens the sour
in slow motion hour;
as a baby swan follows its Mum
learning, as she goes, what it is to be young.

Pairs of ducks and one nervy rabbit
visit our view, by mistake or by habit.

'Rest awhile' says Anne Maud Craig (d. 1991)
so we do, on her bench, Notting-hill style,
head in lap. Content.

All the while we cough, sneeze and ache
in these blue beauty spots
of bay, sea and lake.