A Cropredy Afternoon
England lies in the haze where tree and hedge merge into a single forest of rural mystery, of folklore and myth, where the green man magic is weaved, where fields of rye grass are soft pastures of the past, where boundaries have melted at the edge of perception. Freedom beyond car and trailer, freedom in the breeze that moves the summer leaves of aspen and alder by the river, of oaks that have watched change but impassively hold the past, a past which eludes us even as we reach for it in the sound of fiddle and voice, the touch of ale and the eyes of the girls with flowers in their hair who dance beneath flags on down-trodden sweet grass under cloud-studded blue. But there is an echo, a hint that, almost imagined, suggests itself for a second, perhaps between drum beat and tree top in the shimmering heat - a glance like the flash of the harvester's scythe as the crop is cut, a whisper of the shout of 'harvest home', a straw from the corn dolly, the spirit of the corn, the sun reflecting on the water between the frame of branches, the ripple where the fish kiss the surface from below, the rumble of the cartwheel, the footfall of the horse, the sudden crackle of a greenwood fire that sends the sparks with fleeting life to fade amongst the stars.
The Bond
The light had faded, but despite
Its fast approaching death, the day
With failing strength cast colour on the land
I walked through fields of bracken
Flailing in a restless wind that
Would not give them rest, by the winding paths
Where campion with rain-drenched bow
Fell across the way and rabbit’s
Tails bobbed white into the bracken sward
From the farm I trod where rocky
Bastions rear up from sorrel plains
Out to the coast of broken black and white-
Tipped waves, and to the south the
Shaded sombre red of Skokholm’s light
Now at last the colours fled and rock and
Grass transformed into a sea-scape
Where flowers tipped the waves of
Leaves like foam, lichen encrusted rocks like
White-caps out beyond the craggy
Shore. And here the prehistoric
Walls that lead into the sea with hidden
And romantic purpose, jagged
On the gloomy skyline, remind
Me of a children’s book in which a wall
Deep within a valley marks the
Line between the living and the
Spirit land where shadows walk; I cross the
Boundary with a shiver and
Around me hear the cry of gulls
In the night as black as crows as if on
The tail of clouds that race before
The western wind. I think now of
This ghostly world where past dwells in the dark
Echoes in the works of ancients,
Who almost live when sunlight fades;
Who take their place in nature with living
Flowers and birds, are one with them
As I in hasty progress through
This transformed night-place cannot be; on this
I now reflect as walking fast
Into the wind I seek the home
From which I ventured on a roaming whim
That those who lived and farmed
And died upon this plot of sea-
Encircled land had never left; their bones
No longer lie where they were laid
But through the turning years must rise
As elemental dust through plant roots, that suck
The earth, into the structure of
Their leaves and of their petals, in nectar
Drunk by bees, stems and foliage
Consumed by rabbits and the voles
That scurry silent beneath the forest
Bracken, and in time taken back
Once more into the loamy soil.
They are then all around me in each live
Thing which I consider fresh and
New, spread fine over the landscape
Connecting animal and plant in a
Weave that crosses ages and takes in
All that I in transient haste
Observe with superficial interest.
What if, through this dusting
Their souls could command their parts so
Spread to work in union for some design?
Could show us now what they had learnt
Through disparate but common threads
Of creatures and of vegetable mass that
Form the land? Then, through such idle walks
As mine, knowledge might come through works
Of nature acting in their weave to show
A wisdom that was long since lost
A truth that is not found within
The walls of cities or upon the calm
Of concrete plains but in frantic
Turning seasons, foraging and
Death, mutualistic bonds, the paradox
Of unity and desperate
Fight; a language that we yearn to
Know but feel excluded from, though we walk
For hours in solitary thought
Through nature’s work and wonder at
Our distance from its pattern. Perhaps those
Who lived before could play a
Part that we cannot; connected
By the food and drink they took, to the places
That they came from, nurtured by
The dust they in their turn would
Fall back into, and through that dust in touch
With ancestors and plants and birds
And all their gathered wisdom
The Garden
Rain patters softly on grass, nettle beds, cow parsley. A solitary bee kisses the Fuschia flowers from beneath, one by one. The air is still, and beyond the broken edge of cloud the sun is still high and yellow in the long summer evening. Its heat, absorbed during the day, radiates around me from the upright shell of a sky-blue-painted rowing boat in which I sit. The varnish on the wooden bench has peeled to resemble a sea-scape. Around the ruined farm House Swallows dart, chattering; they are nesting close by. Three Linnets peck at the moss on the top of the wall, and from outside the garden a curlew cries, where the plateau stretches out to the cliffs. It is a moment of tranquility.
Weather Changes
The clouds churn fast across turbulent skies. I am enfolded by mist, tugged at by wind, soaked by pearlescent rain drops that settle wetly on clothes and grass, that drip like tears down the hard-faced cliffs, trickle over the backs of brown and white birds who sleep oblivious, hunched over eggs that defy seeping damp, sodden cold. Waves sweep below, foaming onto basalt, clawing at Kittiwake nests with delicate white-shelled lives cosseted closely within. Breakers thunder with shuddering crash, spray fountains upwards, is caught on the gale and whips over sorrel and campion beds, over outcrops and gulls and winding paths and sign posts and buildings, and streams and rabbits and bracken and beaten-low trees and boardwalks and bird hides.
Over night the storm machine drifts on its way, its engine-loud sound disappearing and leaving behind a fresh calm, a sky that is wide, a sun that in brightness evaporates traces of cold and brings the new scent of the ground; on burrow-filled cliffs the warm smell of the earth and the guano and the salt of the sea. Puffins with silver-shine fish flutter heavily home or emerge with mud-besmirched breast from the ground. On the cliffs egg shells are chipped at from within and life staggers into the light and casts off protection.
I am enfolded by sunshine, touched by the cool of a breeze and soaked by the warmth of the day, while turquoise and Mediterranean waters lap with innocent calm at the feet of the rocks and cradle the birds as they rest.
Swimming
My hands are pale beneath the water rippling like silk at my touch, the sound of individual droplets falling audible in the stillness. The Puffins drift on the sea's roof together and I can almost reach out to them; but I am separate and at the moment when my path turns close to theirs they scatter, disintegrating smoothness with a spray of beating wings and ruffled water. I am immersed but set apart, observer and observed; even gentle moves are misconstrued, betraying conscious impulse, and I drift within an empty-water circle, dipping into turquoise hazed, sunshaft riven emptiness below the sheen. A seal glides, melts and re-appears, playing at the intersect of sea and sky, exhaling with a sound that makes me feel the bay itself is breathing, watching with dark eyes and shining grey, as if the water has gathered itself into a curious but muted living thing, and silence lies between us as it must.
The Storm
Campion flowers bend flat to the earth as the wind streams over their delicate heads with the emptiness of a mindless machine, the destructiveness of nothing, taking anger and pattern and structure and idea and bowling it head over heels without care, without appreciation; it is not a foe to be challenged or beaten; submission is without meaning; it is the creation of layers of air, hot and cold, one pressing down on the other. It is chaos, a ripping tearing shredding force that weakens structure, throws rain and debris, eats away at careful plans, the frames in which we huddle as the tiles fly from the roof, windows rattle and doors creak and water seeps; it is alive, our structures static, left like crumbling habits, ways of life collapsing bit by bit, the shadows of our memory hiding the gaps; the loose plaster, the corroded metal of utopian ideals. We hide their palor with an effort of our minds, like our homes made solid and separate and safe and human by carpets and pictures and delicate things that keep the outside out with a glow that defies the smell of damp, the warped timber of window frames. Not through the dead solidity of bricks or steel, empirical fact or bill of rights do patterns survive, but through a flexing response, a structure that bends like the campion stems but holds its form; a living belief not a dead set of rules, stories shared; not memories locked in pictures and words, rights understood in the heart without need for paper and pen or the hand of the lawmaker stopping our fall; only action and change can counter erosion; there is no ship with uniformed men to bring our animal hunt to an end - we are alone, together.
A New Start: A Sunday Morning in April
Over frost-spangled slopes of gateway hills where water and ice shines on the tarmac I drive into the morning on the ribbon road that ends in the sea
The solid diesel-churning, blue-painted, wood-benched and gull serenaded boat is still the same, and close to cold and choppy waters puffins fly against the wind and Skomer rises grey and green
Up the steps needle pains dart through laden arms, and then there is tea and idle talk while through portal-window tankers ride the waves and morning drifts and island life asserts its rhythm
Familiar sights show changes, the island altered by the season; bracken broken down and low and brown and bluebells pushing upwards
New faces mingle with the old and bring a different beat, the pattern of the fresh and coming year that in the mind fights with ebb and flow against the older weave of memory
But nature does not wait on my reflections that would ossify in backward thought; she turns and her expression changes with the wind and with the birds propelled by instinct in their tasks
And we must also turn and live and change and play our part, for nature is not peace and stillness (except in death; and even then there is decay)
We are swept along by tides and spinning stars and night and day and old pursuits made different by our gathered past
Here no place to put up fronts or hide or slip away; we are together, bound by land and sea and work, thrown in a mix to find a way, to grow and change as the year slips and the clouds roll
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