Astonishingly heavy rain yesterday evening and today.
One of the heaviest bursts happened just as I was stepping off the bus. Had to place the umbrella so that it protected the photocopies for the summer school rather than me. I got soaked. As it should be, though.
No chance of allotmenting today, so I went on a cycle ride. After the drought, there is a lot of early autumn colour - not least, the leaves of the (stressed) horse chestnuts that line the road between Bampton and Clanfield.
The level in the frog pond has risen considerably. Hooray!
Had our first courgettes mid-week.
Now, a poem. Like others posted on jtns, it's a work in progress and may change.
Transcendence
The bowl turns, transparent:
A room in a simple cottage,
Stout floorboards, wooden furniture...
The bowl turns:
Light streaming through mullions...
The bowl turns, like magic:
Walls fading
Gently
Out and into
A sunny paradise beyond.
--
I step through the rooms:
Across the boards,
Along the chequerboard passage,
Past the bookcase I made
Nearly thirty years ago,
Bespoke, for a flat we rented
(That it fitted here seemed
Meant to be)...
Past our favourite print -
Tall winter trees, branches stretched
Like arms,
Like a cross,
A red horse-drawn cart below
And bowed men
In farmers' coats and tweed caps,
Unloading turnips;
Beyond, the ground falling away
Into our valley,
The sight we first saw,
As we drove to view our cottage;
Of course, not our valley
But one like it;
Our valley, nevertheless...
Out onto the flagstones
That we brought from a garden
In Oxford, in twos and threes,
Grinding the Golf's axle...
Past the bird feeders
And the seeds scattered beneath them
That mice nibble at dawn
And a hedgehog has recently
Started visiting at dusk -
The innocence of watching this strange animal
Together;
The anxiety when walking
Beside the road next morning...
Across the lawn and
Along the serpentine path...
Espallied apple trees,
Laden with fruit,
Arms stretched...
A broad-leaved, spear-shaped
Bush, that is golden,
Summer and winter...
A mock orange,
Whose myriad white flowers
Fill the garden with
Their scent in May...
Over the mound that Billy
Made with earth from the pond,
Then across the stepping stones,
The water's surface nipped
By tadpoles,
The lily pads covering the deep side,
Some arced above others,
Engaged in an imperceptibly
Fierce struggle to reach the light...
Ahead, the table and chairs,
Where we sit in the summer evenings...
We listen to the church bell,
Ringing the hour,
To the surprised cooing of pigeons,
The eek of bats,
The scream of swifts...
Swifts we look out for -
Like sailors seeking landfall -
Who make the summer right when they
Arrive, for reasons I cannot articulate
And whose departure we dread...
Another year passed, maybe...
--
In the museum, the bowl turns, transparent:
Walls fading
Gently -
Out and into,
A sunny paradise beyond?
--
The garden is here;
The garden is now;
The garden is all there is.
