From this house on its hill the sea appears,

through a gap in the trees two fields away,

like a wall  – grey, green, blue: the horizon

straighter than any true line in nature.

A spider perhaps two millimetres long

has spun a web in the outside corner

of a window frame. It catches flies twice,

thrice its size daily. Our granddaughter

and I monitor it before breakfast.

The bullocks see us and, curious like

all young creatures, trot over. Jostling

slightly, they lift their heads above the wall.

We can smell their sweet, grassy breaths, look

into their large chocolatey pupils, see

the pristine nap of their hides, count the flies

clustered round their tear ducts.

A south westerly is billowing the rain

like wispy smoke across the pastoral fields

and shimmying the woods of tall trees

in their finery like underwater weeds.

The sodden wide sandy beaches out of sight

beyond the shallow gap in the trees

have witnessed immemorial shipwrecks.

As the bullocks will, the web has gone.

She is too young to think of the past as past.

Spider and flies and the web’s almost straight lines

will be etched like dry points pristinely.