Reflection on an August bank holiday.

Shadows long across the heat burned grass.

The end of summer and the search for… what?

Ahead the prospect of the shortening days

Gold leafed indeed but lengthening dark

Whose ending is December’s death.

Now turned fifty and half a life gone by.

Bright days to come but soon the autumn frosts.

The children grown, old dreams unfulfilled.

Has it all been worth the saying “no”

To those beguiling summer paths?

For faith seems weak, youth’s sureness bent and frayed

So much pain – not mine but this world’s grief.

The sad sight of mid age desperate to stay young

And seeking for a second time around.

But winter has its beauty too.

Hard to believe it's a quarter of century since I wrote this - we've just had this year's August Bank Holiday . It often seems to be more of a turning point than even the official start of autumn or the equinox - a sense of a phase of life ending and another beginning (especially if you are starting or changing school!)

I no longer have that desire for youth that lasts well into middle age, but ... perhaps would be good to be in middle age again, even if I was back at work. Or would it ? But therefore new dreams, stronger faith and a deeper knowledge that Jesus truly is the same yesterday ,today and forever..

No, this isn't the picture I promised in the introduction - that is at the end! This was a sort of dry (or wet as its in oils) run !

After the harvest

Late September. The empty field

Lies quiet beneath the autumn sky

Gold stubble fades to washed out straw

Shadowed by hedges, their final green

Splashed with red of hips, haws and bramble black

Spring’s flowered promises fulfilled

Even the bales, round by-products gone

Leaving space, a soft short interval of peace

To think on these last six months gone.

The fear, the caring unity

Now cut down like wheat. Urgent moving on

Resume, renew, get back to work

Now the economy comes first

But think of those who like this field

Are bounded by the barrier of a hedge

Alive but empty at their heart.

Who shop, pay bills, go on from day to day

Mourning for unexpected death,

Or caring souls, cut down by prolonged pain

Or lonely, cannot understand.

No consolation for now their loss

Has been subsumed within the greater good

All lives are but a bottom line

To plough, sow, reap, to make still bigger fields.

Must Christ die in every generation

To enrich those without imagination?

This is another of the 2020 Covid cycle of poems. Looking at the picture - stubble fields in the Lincolnshire wolds - it gives a feel of a benign sunny autumn, everything cleared away , harvest home,

But the poem was an attempt to convey the sense of emptiness and loss that came as the first angry wave of Covid subsided (we didn't know what was still to come...)

The words at the end are from the last act of Saint Joan - it was part of my English Literature 'O' Level and I recall seeing the young Judy Dench in the title role at Nottingham playhouse

Sorts of Celebration

Two tasks to complete this hot cloudless July week

One. Play my part for our monthly café church, seek

Pictures, words to fit our festival summer theme

Enhance the efforts of the others in the team

Two. Produce for Trellis celebration

A poem (however hard its formulation)

It seems to me:

Some celebrations are national business

Coronations, (dare we dream it?) World Cup success

Bank holidays, bunting, pubs flung open wide

Times to throw off English inhibitions, express

That beneath, beyond the divisions and harsh words

There are still shared dreams, common hopes of happiness

Some celebrations are of a big life event

New birth, new love, new job, retirement

Time to mark together a joyful change of path

Party, meal, Church service, dance, holiday all meant

To make long memories for times of ebbing tide

And carry us from old to new environment

Some celebrations are shared with just one other

Special meal, remembered place to rediscover

Anniversaries: the date you first met, said yes

Or spur of moment rejoicing you are lovers

Private smiles, coded words that always bring you close

Remind when life is hard we have each the other

Some celebrations you keep in yourself alone

Joy at discovering great truth till now unknown

Pleasure in knowing a long planned hard task’s complete

PB running record at long last overthrown

Call of wild geese skein in free flight across full moon

Ache of lost melody that time has overgrown

And now I think:

Task one is done. Table posters all now complete

Ready for the colour printer by my feet

Task two. Well - you’ll have to make a judgement whether

Its thoughts hang well - or otherwise - together

As for me a private celebration

Perhaps a cake and suitable libation

Ian Lacy 10/7/26

This is my most recent piece of poetry, written for the monthly meeting of `Trellis, the online poetry group of theAssociation of Christian Writers . This month's topic is "balance"-so far the ideas have been slow to come!

The new Ulysses

To start out again when comfort calls and

Strive to do new things while continuing

To work on the old so as to

Seek to surpass the best that you have done before.

To relearn the joy of just being and to

Find that joy in the everyday things

And allow long love to ripen into autumn beauty

Not shrivel in the early frosts.

To learn to accept limitations but not to

Yield to the softness of the armchair of age.

For:

here are higher mountains still to

Climb. More “best evers” to strive

To reach. More poems still to

Write, more good knowledge still to seek.

So it is necessary to journey on to

unexpected waypoints and find

They are the start of new adventures and

Bring new joys that will not

Fade into grey dusk as we come to

See older age as challenge, not a call to yield.

I originally wrote this as a challenge to take a quotation and use each word as the first word in a line. It went so well it seemed worth reversing the idea.

And it mnow seems a good one to end on - I've not seen the film yet but am reading The Odyssey itself at the moment (not, i hasten to add , in Greek)