Morgan has walked here many times,
from adolescence, thirty years ago,
when there were girls and, once, an adder
whipping silently back into the
long grass, upon the cliff path,
there, above the Lion Rock. Now
the August day seems to be moving
towards amber evening, as the
sky’s translucence holds
just a trace of storm to come.
Morgan walks quietly across the beach,
as he has walked quietly along
beaches many times. Quite suddenly
the looming purple storm arrives, and he
seems to discern, deep in cloud and wind,
pictorial as the beach’s Lion Rock,
the shape of a mounted horseman,
high within the blue and purple storm,
banking, racing, riding cloud. 
                        

She’d been dumped. 
There was anxiety to help her,
Violet simpering in the corner shop,
the sonorous elders / olders,
the odd crass blast, The clock is ticking, Helen,
and mantras, platitudes, soliloquies.
 
So it could hover, the three-year-only marriage,
like an albatross, with misty thoughts
of female cuckoldry.
 
Work was best, for a while,
the clacketing of the farm shop’s till,
the shoppers, girls from the peninsula,
gracious in ignorance.
Even the greasy charmers.
Nice to be called My dear from time to time. 
(Attention short of lechery was fine).
And shop staff, Gloria was good,
a bangle-jangling girl, calling her,
My sweet, my lamb.
 
Then, closing the shop at five, November,
home, the family waiting.