Our thoughts, reflecting the fears that we suppressed,
turned our eyes to the road ahead and searched
the arc of bay to comment on fishing boats and weather.
Within a few seconds and words we passed the headstones:
marble and red brickwork that sea winds scourged;
forgot the three people huddled on the sloping headland,
heads bowed, as a drizzle started and stopped,
and dead flowers swept across the ditches like paper scraps.

Miles further back on the highway the sun had reappeared—
a dozen or more reflections on windows that caught;
but the wind had brought no quick flashes here:
only the spray of a thousand rivers to wash
the thoughts of three people down the graveyards of the mind,
to headlands not discovered, over landforms undefined.