FIVE YEARS AGO

FIVE YEARS AGO

Part I

That glorious summer

Owned only by we and

To wend down the winding

High-thicketed  lanes

Past clattering mills  and

The honey bee droning

We would lay under shade of willow and

Thorn as the sad sweet of

Rosemary caressed the air...


At shy ancient inns we boasted our love

And explored every castle and village nearby and

We found Roman roads barely  traced on the map

And museums as small as grocers' shop fronts

We braved every nettle and every wasp sting

And every flash shower that summer did bring

Embrace we in rain

And shelter in we

Far firmer far stronger than any oak tree

The signs we divined

Across ancient lay lines

And slept us content under their spell

And found long-lost henges exiled at chart's edges

Concealed within creeper and silent warped shade

And gazed we to heaven in parallel union

To stare at the ceaseless

Blue crease-less of skies

And chart the sun's apex high-nooned in the shimmer

Of honeycombed days dripping slowly with ease.

Part II

LATE in the autumn

At Tintagel most fitting

Like Isolde and Tristan

Upon the high cliff top

The sun's slow decline  to

A scarred charcoal line

Its terminal rays sad setting the distance

Drawing an end to the day and our time.

The warmth of the summer left too far behind us

The weakness of will and the skin's soft corruption

Worn down to the bone and then turning to stone

Holding the fossil that had once been your hand

To the churn of the shingle and the waves' wanton crashing

Crushing the tired last trace of the day

The chill of the sea-mist

All ceasing of colour

Replaced by a shroud of a permanent grey.

S. Evans