The West

He asked me if I would like to see the photos
He had taken, when back there,
That warm blue skied summer,
How could I say no;

So there they were,
Slow gentle cattle, standing on the beach,
Moving amongst the same
Fine golden sand I had been buried in
As a child,
With the beckoning sea pulling behind
Towards a promising land,
And so too those greens,
Rapture of emerald-scented grasses,
Atlantic blown,
Dotted with inscrutable, curly-horned rams;
I heard a saxophone player
Give his tune to the ocean,
And through it all ran the hard, dappled greys,
Walls of stone men had made,

They fenced nothing in,
And yet let nothing really out.