Walking is good for you

When I drove out to Harby

My mind was stale, my mood was flat

I felt annoyed, not wanting that

I should go to Harby.

When I walked out of Harby

The sky was grey, the fields were damp

My legs were stiff – is that early cramp?

I reluctantly left Harby.

When I turned back to Harby

I’d talked to friends, I’d thoughts of lunch

Dry leaves and twigs made a pleasing crunch

Along the path to Harby.

When I got back to Harby

My feet were tired but I felt less low

The food was good (though the service slow)

There in the pub at Harby.

When I came home from Harby
I knew I had been rather bad

But now inside I was really glad

That I had been to Harby.

I belong to a walking group - 6 miles or so every other week followed by lunch at a pub. I usually enjoy it but there are times...

Darby is a village just over the border in Nottinghamshire . Edward the First's beloved wife Eleanor of Castile died there in 1290. And in one of life's probably meaningless coincidences I twas in London last week and left the Underground at Charing Cross, the last of a series of crosses Edward had built to mark the stages of her last journey to London

Lindsey skies

Does only Lindsey have these skies?

The grey diffusion of sullen light

The pressing weight of saddened air

Our spring’s false copy of northern summer night.

Does only Lindsey have these skies?

High arching blue, soft cirrus clouds

The greening wheat, the glistening dykes

Our spring’s true answer to the winter’s blight.

Does only Lindsey have these skies?

No. For us all the stratus breaks

The helpless pain, then joy’s surprise.

Without the clouds there is no sudden shaft of light.

This is another early poem from "Lines from Lindsey',my first published collection. The sky has been today as it it was in the first verse but it too will pass and tomorrow the forecast is fair.

Three sonnets at Port en Alls

To eastwards curve of coast fades into haze

Shape, colours swallowed in uncertainty

Of where land, sea, sky keep identity

Separate from each other. This dying day’s

Light seems mergent with growing dark that lays

Night on prospects of bright eternity

With loss of all in greyed infinity

And we can only long this sad moment stays.

But from the grey strikes point diamond light

Reflected from that other truth, the sun

Answer that life’s thin thread is not yet spun

Hope beyond darkness of the coming night

Dawn in the east will yet make all things right

Bright present proof of new life yet to come.

Night. Uneasy dark lies dull across the sea

Pressing down the weight of all men’s doubt.

All forms that make life sure the mist blots out

Though in day they merely point to mystery.

No air soft stirs the leaf of summer tree.

Only the endless tidal rise and fall

Sighs on sand. No mournful night birds call

Their plaintive news of when the dawn may be.

And then long miles away a lighthouse gleam

Man-made brief truth of hope against the dark

Enough to steer a course against the stream

Enough to show good men may make their mark

Proclaim bright day to come beyond the dream

To rise with courage skyward as the lark.

New morning and across the sweeping bay

What was lost in mist is now made plain.

The lines of cliff sea’s chaos still restrain

That men may wake and go about their day

Unafraid to labour, love and play.

In homes and fields warm summer comes again

Surety of harvest, soon ripening grain

Store ‘gainst winter in firm built barn will lay.

Last night’s fear now seems small but no less real

Those truths of empty death that all men dread

Lightless pathways we know are ours to tread

Though now our little lives seem strong as steel.

But – light has come. Whatever lies ahead

Cannot dismay those whose hope is not yet dead.

July 2016

The first was inspired by a prolonged flash of reflected light on the Lizard across Mounts Bay as all faded into haze. The third was an attempt to describe hope in the following morning’s sunlight, and then, some weeks later it seemed right to add a nocturne in the middle. Port en Alls is also known as Prussia Bay

The Embroidery

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point”

C. S. Lewis

Rainbow vibrant, scattering bright sunlight

Colours of cardinal virtues captured

Deft needles made design reality

Embroidered beauty of true humanity.

Green generosity, pure love’s deep red

White humility, self-control’s bright gold

Cerise gratitude, diligence is blue

Quiet brown patience awaiting all things new.

Unseen beneath gorgeous flare of colour

Grey canvas holds the many threads in place

No thought given by the admiring crowd

This fabric does not speak its name aloud.

But without it no virtue will stand test

Staunch courage gives its form to all the rest.

May 2024