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.