Ullswater

Set off earlier and drove down via Ullswater on my way to work this morning.

Summer Farm - Norman MacCaig

Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass
And hang zigzag on hedges. Green as glass
The water in the horse-trough shines.
Nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines.

A hen stares at nothing with one eye,
Then picks it up. Out of an empty sky
A swallow falls and, flickering through
The barn, dives up again into the dizzy blue.

I lie, not thinking, in the cool, soft grass,
Afraid of where a thought might take me – as
This grasshopper with plated face
Unfolds his legs and finds himself in space.

Self under self, a pile of selves I stand
Threaded on time, and with metaphysic hand
Lift the farm like a lid and see
Farm within farm, and in the centre, me.

... I seem to remember dad made us a wooden farm when we were little.

GP rang later - stopping all usual meds and syringe driver being put in.
I was glad to be in the company of my friend who had got tickets for a talk by the retired KS gp on his work in Darfur with Medecins sans Frontieres - astonishing work, gruelling to see and hard to imagine the horrors from the comfort of a village hall in Cumbria, another world away in every conceivable respect.