Bridleway.

When I walked out on this bright spring morning,
I felt like a creature from another world where time had frozen round about me.

I knew the earth was singing like the birds,
But the note hung in the air,
A single tone anchored to the soil.

All around, the green buds burst,
Sap exploding into flower-froth;
hydraulic energies inflating leaves like detonating air bags..
But in the treacle motion of my freeze frame world
I saw only delicate flags of white and green,
Fingering the morning air.

And the sun hung golden
In a mist so thin that the hills were watercoloured by the light.

Everything was soft;
The light, the leaves, the motherly curves of the grass-furred chalk slipping down to the track where I walked.
Even my shadow was soft, draping itself across the dry path where ants moved in intricate perambulations;
clockwork creatures trickling out of cracks with their morning mechanisms slow and half unwound.

My spring unwound as well
and in the long, elastic string of time and circumstance
I tasted the unhurried privilege of peace.

It was a taste I could acquire.


(c) A Mc N