Christopher Reidâs wonderful, calming new collection The Late Sun is a patchwork of sunlight and shade. The opening poem, Photography, set in a sunny restaurant before lunch, ends contemplatively:
What I can see and am smitten
by is a cool, square depth
of shadow and nuance,
fixed for an instant, an age.
Reid is a parental poet, bringing responsible, reserved yet often playful attention to what he sees. Running at the Sea describes a small boy and girl chasing waves. Charming and accurate, it ends with verbs that could belong to the children themselves. The sea alternates between âboom and shushâ â suggestive of a noisy game, a lullaby. In a collection of exceptional observations, Reid misses nothing: a tree surgeonâs acrobatics in an ordinary London plane tree, a riderless horse taking a short canter âon the sly,/ like a loose thoughtâ, mountains seen from a plane, their overflowing shapes brilliantly described as âslovenlyâ.