Once more the window and a furious fly
shifting position, niftier on the pane
than the slow liner or the tiny plane.
Dazzled by the sun, dazed by the rain,
today this frantic speck against the sky,
so desperate to get out in the open air
and cruise among the roses, starts to know
not all transparency is come and go.

But the window opens like an opened door
so the wild fly escapes to the airstream,
the raw crescendo of the crashing shore
and ‘a radical astonishment at existence’ –
a voice, not quite a voice, in the sea distance
listening to its own thin cetaceous whistle,
sea music gasp and sigh, slow wash and rustle.
Somewhere the wave is forming which in time . . .

Photograph © Mai Rodriguez