The Orchard

After the painting by David Inshaw
The landscape has composed itself into this stillness —
the sky with its rich blue,
the green solace of the trees —
but is changing … Night hovers with the hawk, its wings
stretched to embrace the scene,
its body intent on some small movement
inside shrubbery. All is motionless, yet changing …
so that the woman in red, on the left,
stands in shadow as she gazes
welcomingly at someone unseen in further darkness;
and the woman to the right is sunlit,
her arm raised in farewell
to a vanished figure. Both are among orchard trees,
some with ladders propped against
snaky branches … As if all climbing,
descending; welcoming, farewelling; ripening, plucking
can be known in serenity and held
a moment there before the hawk
falls and a vast darkness unrolls like velvet
with only that silver line
of moon piercing the cover …
But the silver line and the darkness are also change:
within their stillness, the drained-
gold stubble of morning, harvest colours
of other sunsets.