Culvery

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/media/46095/4919-culvery-wood.pdf

Down dusty track of memory I strolled,

Enveloped by the ancient wood and years,

A fallen Oak, felled by the wind, its age revealed,

Where severed by a no-doubt noisy saw.

To right steep bank of Hornbeam, Ash and Beech,

Escarpment-saved from plough and sheep,

Survival from a pre-historic past,

Gazed on by mediaeval serfs entranced.

To left, the somnambulant stream,

Pursues its silent course, almost imperceptibly it flows

From distant limestone hills to far off sea,

Undisturbed by dancing gnats or flitting birds.

Overhung with Alder, its banks the home of Voles,

It timelessly mianders, mile after mile,

Its dark mysterious purpose, here on this bend,

In private view, I gaze upon, exposed.

At the gate, under the dark canopy of leaves,

The sun-lit meadow is revealed, stretching away.

Buttery yellow from its carpet of Celandines,

Sun-kissed Buttercups and white laced Cow Parsley.

Awaiting the rasp of tongue and swish of tail

That only contented cows and avian choir provide,

To complete this bucolic scene,

Which just for a still moment, I imbibe.

Artistic eyes, poetic seam, that here finds verse,

Mesmerically I recall the dream,

An act of drama sixty-six years afore

The world with all its horrors intervened.

The summer day Steve Perry called and asked me out,

And here we rolled about the clay,

Enacting adult worlds of life and death,

Quite unaware that this would be,

The last time we would play.

Thoughts 

by Tim Veater

(A Reverie - Walter Langley 1883)

I have worn my heart out on my sleeve

I have made my bed and now must lie

At times I've even got down on my knees

And played the part of the besotted lover

Just to please you.

I have waited up unearthly hours

I have listened to each tick and tock

In sitting room and hall amidst the flowers

Ever hopeful for your call

Just in case but it was not.

Whilst walking down the lane

Whilst peeling the potatoes

Or riding on the train

I have wondered what you are doing

But all in vain.

So many seconds, minutes, hours and years

In every one a fleeting thought

That some day you might appear

As you had before

But you never did come back.

I am increasingly aware of the ethereal and transient. Of the passing of people and things; of the loss of those familiar icons that surround us. Day by day we see names disappear, names that were the reference point of our lives, personal or impersonal, intimate or distant. It's as if we are in an ascending balloon with the ground dropping away from us, up through the clouds towards the heavenly sphere and inevitable outer space, leaving all earthly things behind and being divested of them. As we go, the vista changes. Before we looked up. Now we look down. Then we looked forward. Now we look back, ever conscious we are nearing the end. What of the journey? Was it meaningful or memorable - memorable as it becomes increasingly difficult to remember anything. Surrounded by a clutter of things, significant only to you, it is time to throw them out of the basket to gain greater altitude. They fall to earth with a thud, heard only by those still on the ground, now only specks of black in a vast expanse of green. Ants pursuing some obscure objective but always in a rush, appearing to meet some ill defined objective on which all depend; fixed in their alloted role, obedient, unquestioning, deterministic. Here in our elevated position, the ever expanding balloon above us, the swaying wicker basket our only security and protection from a catastrophic fall, we just keep rising, until the earth and all its struggles and systems, is but a beautiful blue and white orb. In a delightful haze filled with wonder, we drift off into the blackness of space and become once again, integrated nothingness, perhaps just a distant memory to those still nailed to the ground. "Where did he go?" they ask. "Well the last time I saw him, he was heading for a balloon!" "I always did think he was a basket case! Wasn't he related to Daphne in the chip shop? Someone said he once held the record for holding his breath underwater and I think his grandfather was on the Jarrow March. Oh well what's for supper?"