A Country Evening

Do you know that feeling when there's something inside you, a lump of emotion, that needs to come out but you don't know how? With me, fleeing to Nature is the way to deal with it. My family know me well and don't even bat an eyelid when I tell them I've been sitting under a rhododendron bush in the woods!


Anyway, I went for a drive this evening, filled with this urge to get out and deal with all the feelings churning inside. I didn't know exactly where I was heading. The beach maybe? The woods? Luckily I live near to both habitats. I just drove and followed my instincts.


As I drove slowly down a country lane I saw a hare peeking at me from behind a hedge - a hare! The Lady's creature! So I knew that was where I was meant to go. I parked on a little track between two fields, rolled down my window and watched through my binoculars, listening to a cascade of bird song. Having brought with me my notebook and pen, another way to get those unnamed feelings out into the air, I wrote the following:


A chilly but sunny June evening.
Two hares lope across the bare earth.
A cock pheasant pops his head up
out of the long grass.
All around the songs of birds:
Blackbird, Chaffinch, Pheasant, Wood Pigeon
and many more that I can't identify.
A hen pheasant disguises herself
as a clod of earth.
Two little birds fly over - Linnets perhaps?
If only I'd brought my bird book!


I came out with aches in my heart,
grief,
the need to weep,
the need to do something,
to get out,
to go somewhere.
And I followed my heart's leading -
and a big hint from a hare -
to this beautiful place.


A Goldfinch sips from a puddle just ahead.
Further off comes the crack
of a gun - hunting pheasants no doubt.
But, ah, they do not know
the bliss of this little haven.


And no-one to share with,
no-one to remember this with,
no-one to take out this photograph
from our memory
and say "Do you remember 
that beautiful June evening..."


My Friend is gone.
He went a long time ago;
long, long before his body went
my Friend left me - 
ran off with his Mistress*
who killed him.
Slowly.


A Yellowhammer
has a splashy bath in the puddle.
A little moth
comes out to play.


And the world turns on and on.
Someone dies,
someone is born;
someone weeps,
another laughs.....


A BARN OWL!
A BARN OWL!!!
Gliding silently by,
its supper gripped in its claws.
And another hare passes
so close I could almost touch it!


And these are my Father's gifts,
my Mother's comforts,
to kiss me
and help me through.


Amen.
Amen.

*alcohol, not a woman