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