Driving Westward

For Polesworth now read Holsworthy: on Radio
     Three,
Continuity, Dowland's sighing tears. Each tree
Wields its true flail, the Atlantic wind's corrective:
The rusts that gnaw the hedgerows look infective.
By Germansweek and Ashwater, low mist,
A scrim of green, the threadbare rain persisting,
The fields unleavened by light. Here and there
A horse and rider draggling in the drenched air.
So it is that, driving towards the west
I think of the poet's impulse towards the east
Which now the mirror shows as a gray and thin
Oblong where car-lights grow larger or diminish -
The occasional driver grimly making way
White-faced and frowning into the blinding spray.
...