Persuasion

 You never thought much of the darkness, did you? You wanted everything so open, open – I said it could not be – you laughed, and shook me, and pointed me and swivelled me to windows, doors, rivers, skies – said it must be, must issue right out if it was to have any honour – what: love? – yes: love; it must seal up its burrow, must take a stair or two, a flight or two, for poles, horizons, convoys, eleveations – but tender still to backcourts and dim woodlands. Oh, never ask where darkness is if light can break down the very splinters of the jambs – be sure I know you can take in the sunlight through every pore and nothing will be blinded or shrivelled up like moth in flame or crippled by some excess of nakedness – just give it, your intelligence, your faith I really mean, your faith, that’s it, to see the streets so brilliant after gales you really can go out there, you really can have something of that gladness, many things under the sun, and not disheartened, so many in their ways going beside you.

- Edwin Morgan, from Hold Hands Among the Atoms

The beach gang at sunset.

- Pakarang Beach, Khao Lak