Ladywell

I had forgotten the sky, and the clouds,

The giant cedar tree, the aging oaks.

I had forgotten underfoot the soft

Crunch of hazel shells, trodden into the yielding turf.

I had forgotten the heavy darkness

Of the trees that line the avenue

The shake and quiver of tiny leaves

Turning grey and green, perning in the wind.

The patches of sun-scorched grass,

The field sloping away,

Mown by a fading melody.

I had forgotten how to breathe,

How to think compassionately,

Almost…how to love. 

I had forgotten that in the last baking sun of September

The hot air moves in almost solid banks of heat

Birds glide from copse to copse around the flat gravestones

Of the Franciscan sisters. 

I had forgotten that up, beyond the trees,

The imperturbable sky, laced with whisps of white cloud

Drifts across the valley in a transmutating line.

I had forgotten the insects

Determined to sing their sudden song.

I had forgotten how it felt to scrump

Apples from branches just out of reach.

I had forgotten. 

I had wandered, God knows how, a lifetime from these things.

And now, their imprint freshly stained into my heart

Tells me of good, of love, of the sublime

And draws me to their inscape.

I had forgotten but now found again what I had felt was dead in me. 

I had forgotten that I was still alive and all the things that matter to

My moral being are living still – 

The round earth, the multitudinous seas, the sighing winds,

The mind of man spinning out an endless flax.

And I had forgotten that we can touch again,

As I did at Ladywell,

The hand of God.