A Summer Night

In a summer night’s embrace, The stars are scattered like silver dust, A whispered harmony amidst the leaves, While the moon fashions shadows, Into fleeting forms, more real than human.

The soft sigh of the ocean calls, With a voice only the night knows, As gulls wheel high above the waves, And the salt air is thick with dreams, Of all that was, and all that is to come.

• George Mackay Brown