that enclose my days, open up ahead, like a book.

And I watch a ship on the sea’s blank page – a fugitive

full stop – write itself into refracted light 
and vanish. Clouds blot and then tear across

the sun. Bees scrawl in the long petals

of fuchsia heath bursting from rocks 
like asterisks. Walking here, I saw the forest

flowers beginning to open. What offering

can I make on a hard winter’s outer edge, word 
thin, hands empty? This overhang offers me

its scripts of moss, its winking stone. It steps into blue air,

above a drop that would crumple me like paper.