Sunrise across the Solway, mid March

Sunrise across the Solway, mid March

 

Morning sky, roseate and layered

broken up with a multitude

of grey-blue horizontals. 

 

Foreground land mass 

dark and low, settled into water,

lake-mountains beyond, paler and 

snow capped still. 

 

Contrast of a vivid

cherry blossom sky above, 

underlined with silver marker 

just touching the fells

casting highlights over low peaks.

 

The pink glow fading dustily upwards 

into the underside of damask clouds, 

obscuring the summit of higher hills.

 

These low clouds are topped

with a bright white-pink downlight, 

layers of these cotton clouds amass 

above the land, beyond them is revealed

translucent flat palest-blue sky with

lines of brilliant white. 

 

The last clouds before this soothing backdrop 

are loose and churned, reaching up 

to where the sky glows a brilliant petal-pink 

soft in colour but gloriously luminous. 

 

Layers of drifting forms

accumulate in high lengths above

with bottom-heavy tonality

giving a sense of form and mass,

 

miles of cloud in blue and apricot

flowing like ice on a river current,

slow but ever proceeding,

and then, in a moment, 

the light’s strength disappears, 

colours desaturate to a sky of grey 

with vague hints of what was, 

seconds before, small ripples of

warm grey and still, behind the mountains 

a strip of glowing light, 

apricot pink tinged yet cool, 

a snow-light, 

pure and restful.