Thyme

In search of one space we found another for by chance as much as hope we discovered the hidden garden

I beg your pardon says I to the horticulturalist but are you open on Friday for that is when we leave and we would like to take some of your plants with us

For instance the grapefruit mint and the strawberry or banana mints o and yes yes the orange thyme

I've already thought of a place to place to put them it will need a bit of clearing up and a modicum of brickwork construction

But I promise they will be cared for as I intend in the fullness of time of course to begin making my own perfumes and a range of aromatherapy oils

I've read about base notes and high notes and those other notes in between

So you see your notes are just the beginning of a new lifetimes passion at least that is what I most sincerely hope for in this particular moment

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Seashore

Steps down to the beach
To take photographs
Of chalk-white pebbles
And a sea which merges into a sky
At that point formerly known as the horizon

A wall on which to sit
To have photographs taken
Portraits of each other
Exposed in turn with the cliff
And the rampant vegetation as a backdrop

Then striding-out along the sands
Towards the town a mile or so away
Past the seventy year old man with his wife
Digging in the sand for fishing bait
He is due in Filey tomorrow if the weather holds
As it sort of holds today that is
Until we reach the Road Train terminus

I have taken photographs of the surf of the beach
Of the waves of the sea and of the fisherman soon to be
I compare and contrast this afternoon
Of the place of the environment of the emotion
I settle on gratefulness especially for the laughter

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Tears

One girl
For no apparent reason
Is crying inconsolably

Her teacher tries to calm her
But with little success
So then she turns

To another child
Who she says is always good humoured
And asks could she cheer up the sad girl

Who does in fact steady herself
But fails to allow a smile
Which ought to be the natural reaction

To her friends expression of fun
And joy and willingness to care
For the deeply distraught youngster

How deep is her hurt
Where does the pain arrive from
How many years before she is released

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Zoo

Filled with school-children
All wearing fluorescent yellow
Hazard-warning waistcoats

Here for feeding time
One group from which school I wonder
Are paired off in couples and walk around holding hands

Also grandparents and parents
And pre-school children
In brightly coloured perambulators

Stopping
To look at the dramatically coloured exotic birds
Whose gaiety they are soon set to mimic

Now it is the time to gather up the bairns
For this year's group photograph
Before the twenty-eight juniors

Of the class of 2016 exit for the day
While the grey clouds approach
To cover over their once clear blue sky

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Box

The boxed edge does not look quite so precise as it might have done under a more disciplined head gardener

The pathways are not so tidy or well kept as they would have been when first laid down the paint is flaking on the pillars and the ceiling of my sitting area and the bricks are engraved with lovers initials

Kate used the term 'municipal planting' for the flower beds I think she was concise and exactly to the point they are way too formal

And so on to the Clock Tower Café for a prawn and lettuce sandwich on oatmeal bread then a coconut slice with a black Americano coffee while Kate waits in the queue to make her selection

Our friends that is all three generations are taking the Road Train into town and back again before we meet up for tonight's concert in The Spa

Where the Last Shadow Puppets are filled with energy and boundless obvious joy as they give and receive the love and the adulation of their Bridlington Brid audience

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More Light

The sunlight streamed through the Georgian window casting a rectangular patch of nine lights onto the dining room wall the centre part of which had the crystallised light form of the flower vase which sat on the window-sill

I sat to the side of the window for my morning meditation I listened to a recording of Tibetan Bells and Ocean Waves as I meditated in the warm light knowing that a few hundred yards away stood the cliffs against which the real sea swelled

I know this because yesterday evening we walked out to the cricket field at Sewerby I edged from the boundary line towards the drop though not too close for I am not too fond of heights and know that vertigo or fainting or light-headedness can occur at any moment

Walking around the field we saw a down-at-heel middle-aged man asleep on a seat outside the cricket pavilion we saw him again later in the evening outside our holiday cottage ambling towards the street-light of the road beyond

I did not interrupt his stupor should I have done should I have enquired as to how he had arrived at this situation would it in any way have helped him to shed any more light onto his particular life story

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Sound-Scapes

I find meditating in a group inspirationally energising in point of fact just a week back I was with a small gathering doing a taster meditation in our Old Stables we were listening to music Tibetan Singing Bowls with Ocean Waves (feat. Vidura Barrios) from Vajra Yoga Meditation for Beginners Volume 2

The meditation was to let thoughts come and go as they wished not forcing them in neither forcing them away yet not to focus on them either instead to use your breath and your mantra as a place to gently return to

I found myself in very many places with water being the thread which connected me to the various locations from the Idle Rocks Hotel at St Mawes to Porthminster Beach in St Ives from St Brelades Bay in Jersey to that same islands Corbiere Lighthouse from the wide open sands on the Outer Hebrides to the streams on Dartmoor which flow into the river at Buckfastleigh Abbey

These are the ones I now remember yet I know for sure that there were many many more so it is therefore a meditation which I do wish to return to for I will always have ample desire to be refuelled by nostalgia

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Wasp

It is a good word isn't it wasp
In every which way it seems to take hold of you

Just to look at those four letters arranged as they are
Yes already there is a level of fear attached don't you think
And then as you roll the word over your lips
Your tongue pushing to flush out any residual venom

Yet how could such a small word
Hold claim to such threatening behaviour
Short as the wasp itself is short
When compared to my size ten boot

And how such an uncomplicated word
Can take you to that intricate assembly
How it can raise the black and yellow stripes
How it can raise such imperious buzzing

All of which together raise wide-scale disturbance
As it approaches our outdoor dining-table

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Description

Should I begin with the roof-light
Or the wood-burner
Stood on a slab of Derbyshire stone
Itself supported by small pyramids of wood
Which no doubt Keith made himself
Or maybe the roof-beams
With their bright and rusted fixing bolts
Or the small patch of raw stone
Left without plaster for visual effect
Actually I do need to tell you
That the room has seven walls
Some long some short especially
Those around one of the three doorways
The largest of which is a double
In the style of French Windows
Which look out onto the large garden
Where the leaves waver in the breeze
O and by the way
The ceiling has five surfaces
Two flat three sloping above which
There is only sky
Sky from which the light falls
Sky from which the rain falls
Sky on which I can contemplate
As I look out through the roof-light

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Thought

I thought to go to a quieter place

Gibraltar Point or Theddlethorpe

I have been before to quiet places

Slapton Sands or on top of Dartmoor

I thought that to travel there often

Would be an expense of time of money

Yet I have often travelled for peace

Beggared the expense

Spent all that I had

Instead I thought to stay nearer to home

To create my own quiet space

To sit in my own rooms

To walk through my own gardens

Then I thought what do I own

What might I lay my hands upon

And say yes yes this is mine

It is the one thing which I do own

Or the one thing which I thought I owned

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