Noctilucent We cross the garden: slant sun, slack tide of shadow. He is remembering woods below San Pietro, the ragged end of a war. Soldier and red-cloaked shepherd on the road, the old man stilling his dog, waiting in the white road. He watches now: his stumble down, wading knee-deep through tangled nets of dazzle, spills of shade, to the soft chalk curve between the trees, the red cloak burned in his eyes. His hand, unsure. He says, If a person walking raises his hand he sees the shadow of each finger doubled. Trees slide down to lap us, attentive to our solitudes, until the hollow dark is filled with memory of light – fluorescence, phosphor glow, poppies’ slow burn; ghostlights to guide our double-going. All this This is where it all comes home to us, in the fetch of light crossing the mirror line and only a bank of concrete blocks grounds us here in the level give and take of the estuary now the machinery miles down between Stavanger and Bergen begins to heave the whole weight of the sea round; long rigs churn back over the Blessing of Burntisland, heap into the firth in a shining skim that hauls its undertow of sky across the silt buckling the mudflats open; we are dissolved in this now our edges bloom underwater and the sanderling livewire at the lick of foam sheer away in scuds of grey-white Judith Willson 3