Removed
28th October 2014
A day in the South Downs nr Harting. Gloriously warm and bright but all in a raiment of autumn. To add to the confusion I heard both the guttural roars of rutting stags and a carolling Skylark. The seasons collide in this unseasonable weather.
I came to this spot as it was where I left a small token of love and respect to a loved and lost friend. The gesture was a Serpentine Pebble taken from the Lizard in Cornwall. This was a place we both shared and loved. The stone represented our memories, shared experiences and our link to things we loved (the land and nature).
Today the stone was no longer there. Moved? Removed? Or recovered?
I placed a stone
High up on the Downs
Where the larks carol to an east.
That rises over green
Folded hills of broken time.
Where the towers of winds
Blow the madrigals call
Across green meadows
That fill the space between.
And the marjoram, basil
Bedstraw, medick and thyme
Cling to hills, dissolved
Perched against the verdant plain.
Here, lost above the accusing
Poppies that proclaim propriety to
Ground turned over, broken.
Deep chalky, treads, ruts.
Heralding the wind
They shake like barley.
Foreboding and filled
Blood red as memory.
It now sits, crouched against the
Shivering, vulnerable bark
Of a grey hawthorn
Smelling the white of death.
And old as the hard Earth
And in the earth
Plucked from Cornish shores
Where waves crash on rocks
Serpentine, red, worn.
Curled around eternal life.
Holding in magma, a past -
A gateway between worlds
Now points to the west
That disappears, as each league
Rolls, wavers, meanders. To
Where the sun increasingly falls.
A rock, as hard as
Life itself, rounded
Shamed, beaten, rolled
With gleam and shimmer
Light reflecting, holding
All the past that eroded
Pulled apart and polished
This hand filled rock.
And what of any observer?
Who stumbles upon this chalk-land place?
High, above that vale?
They will wonder why
They will ask....
"This is a stone that should not be there!?"
I came to this spot as it was where I left a small token of love and respect to a loved and lost friend. The gesture was a Serpentine Pebble taken from the Lizard in Cornwall. This was a place we both shared and loved. The stone represented our memories, shared experiences and our link to things we loved (the land and nature).
Today the stone was no longer there. Moved? Removed? Or recovered?
I placed a stone
High up on the Downs
Where the larks carol to an east.
That rises over green
Folded hills of broken time.
Where the towers of winds
Blow the madrigals call
Across green meadows
That fill the space between.
And the marjoram, basil
Bedstraw, medick and thyme
Cling to hills, dissolved
Perched against the verdant plain.
Here, lost above the accusing
Poppies that proclaim propriety to
Ground turned over, broken.
Deep chalky, treads, ruts.
Heralding the wind
They shake like barley.
Foreboding and filled
Blood red as memory.
It now sits, crouched against the
Shivering, vulnerable bark
Of a grey hawthorn
Smelling the white of death.
And old as the hard Earth
And in the earth
Plucked from Cornish shores
Where waves crash on rocks
Serpentine, red, worn.
Curled around eternal life.
Holding in magma, a past -
A gateway between worlds
Now points to the west
That disappears, as each league
Rolls, wavers, meanders. To
Where the sun increasingly falls.
A rock, as hard as
Life itself, rounded
Shamed, beaten, rolled
With gleam and shimmer
Light reflecting, holding
All the past that eroded
Pulled apart and polished
This hand filled rock.
And what of any observer?
Who stumbles upon this chalk-land place?
High, above that vale?
They will wonder why
They will ask....
"This is a stone that should not be there!?"