Colonsay (commended poem: 2016 competition)

From a certain    position
it is possible to see
a strange          agitation
of light as sliding          frames
and the slight adjustments
of         falling rain assumed
into the sea with almost
imperceptible      slowness,
half-destroyed              already.
Gathering momentum,
so light it hardly registers,
its patches        intruding on
each other as a wave
undoes the thing it’s only
barely just           achieved,
mid-brushstroke,         and
the massive ships at sleep
between           two storms,
or none, or possibly     a third.
The tiny shifts in pressure,
the resistance of air      collapsing
through a window, returning
to me from a       distance
with the sensation of too many
things happening     at once,
hurling themselves away again,
now only         intermittent
as a sheet of cloud unhinges
from itself, a silent catastrophe
occurring almost       unperceived.
Patterns of stained       glass
under water,       noiseless as
a reliquary on the horizon,
or where I imagined the horizon
should have been between
the rocks,         a concrete city
rising from the ocean, losing
control of what it       motivates,
finally untangled as I felt the blood
move in my head and the sky
went whitely      on, without us.