CUT LOOSE

unexpectedly,
floating free. No time or voice
to say goodbye.

My wife
was talking with her sister
over lagers, into twilight;

the kids cavorting
on the lawn behind the pub
- they did not notice.

Rising through a muzz of midges,
A sudden frenzy
Of screaming swifts;

above a crumbling barn
fringed with elderflower,
the orange clay-tiled village;

and out over hazy fields
and hedgerow trees
- the gentle landscape

of smouldering light and shadow,
where I somehow thought
I’d stay for ever.

John Arnold