For Andrew and Hannah
and their Menorcan house

Standing to, at its moorings,
the San Expedito hugs
its harbour walls.
Below the handrail,
ramparts and defences
form a gallery of faces
found in an ancient
burial ground, carved
and pitted by the sea.
With the cemetery
half sealing off
the distant straits,
ancestral bones defend
both passes to the valley
that self-selected you.
The spoon's bowl, like
cupping hands held out
for the gifts of heaven,
is dissected down the spine
of its fold-back picnic handle,
rimmed by rows of vertebrae
(except where you have
slipped some discs). And
the tiny fields, swept back
to their own margins, are
furnished with carpets
of winter feed, fringed
about by buttercups, that
also lap along the lane --
like confetti brushed aside.
A fig tree has fossilised
an octopus, an olive tree
is naked but is still alive.
A horse laughs, a dog
nags at its chain. The sun
which has dispensed
its medicine all day
closes its door behind the hill
and the valley seems to sigh.
The fire and the furnace
fixed, evening descends
like a mist of quietness,
and the terrace starts
to yawn. Menorca slips
into memory and sleep,
life is domestic, small and
self-contained. The valley
seems filled with holy water
for the sanction of the night.
The tide turns between opposites
and sinks down to be the same.
Freed from all its urgent
causes, San Expedito
mutes its bell, and
floats away on dreams.

When God was playing
with his toys, before Time
was even Ancient, he copied
Botticelli's Tuscan hills,
painted in broad swathes
the darker greens of trees,
stacked and scattered stones
and, wiping out his brush,
he formed the bays. Then,
just about to turn away,
with one deft touch, he
finished off his play, adding
your valley like a signature.
But more perhaps a matrix
than a word - an authentic
thumbprint of the Lord.

Roy Davids - O three O two O one