Connoisseurs And Counterfeits Poem by Tony Jolley

Branksome Beach had a ‘feeling’ about it this morning,
(Less of a one this afternoon)
Only it was playing its cards too close to its chest for me to call.

The haze was part of it, but it wasn’t it.
It was something more, rather than something else:
Something related -
Related in the way that time relates to life
And pain relates to pleasure:
Implicitly, imprecisely,
Interestingly: unsettlingly.

It was so very near to the natural,
Close to congruent
But for that haunting, sneaking feeling
That Nature was somehow lip-synching
A tune intended for a decidedly different day,
As if its attention lay elsewhere,
Upon some better beach.

Put ‘Today’: the original and the counterfeit together
And there’s not a connoisseur could divine between them:
To all intents and all purposes the same.
But I’m the poor painter who intended and purposed
And to me they’re both original, both authorised;
Still one doesn’t ‘feel’ right – and even I don’t know why.