Setting Out, Turning Back

One footstep too many

One raindrop for the few

One beech nut tree story

The fell and the root reordered

One old school house standing

One age of time to view

One car driven too quickly

The pace of life in residue

One branch softly swaying

One sunspot to include

One patched up blue sky

The hope is to preview

A seat looking out

Away across the meadow

A treat for sincere sore eyes

After a walk, a path to follow

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Play

It wasn’t Rocco

Who complained

About being hit by the wheelbarrow

No, it was someone’s mother

Who asked why

Why would anyone do such a thing

But there and then

With an adult’s intrusion

Rocco’s game was over

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Musing

I don’t honestly know

What my life is about

Not at least, as in the words

Of Story of My heart

By Richard Jefferies

I do (hopefully honestly) know

That to among nature

With a breeze to my back

Is about a good a thing

As one might peacefully imagine

Several layers of green leaves

Before and beneath the blue sky

Stock still grove stones

Telling the forever stories

Of families and societies

There is even room here

For thorns and nettles

For rough cut grass

And overgrown hedges

To keep life contained

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Always, And Forever

I came upon a love-seat

From the year MM

Here in the graveyard

I sat to look at the yew trees

From the year M

Beside me the shadow

Whose tree bears the pellets

For my peashooter

Back in the day

When boys would be boys

Long before I had set out

In search of silence

Or at least the sort found

By tall, thin grasses

Swaying in the summer breeze

Behind me the canal

And the footpath

Leading to the woods

Where more adventurous sorts

Have built a shelter

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As Good As It Gets

There are butterflies

And dragonflies

And ducks

Washing themselves

In the calm canal

There are squealing pigs

Being fattened for the slaughter

There are machinery noises

As there were in my days

At Hepworth Iron

There are tall grasses

And cow parsley by the dozen

There are those tiny wasps

What do they call them

Yes, hornets, that’s the one

I can hear the pigeons going

But they are here as well

Also I am waiting

For the disharmonious elevator

To stop its tuneless whirring

Of course we have blue skies

Above the diamond jubilee

Two-seat lover’s bench

In the graveyard, beside

The Louth canal, on its way to the sea

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