Up and down

Bugle:  Ajuga reptans

Yes, I know, for the first time in years I didn't blip yesterday.  I was so unwell it would have been a joke even trying for an EB.  Haven't been that sick since I was rushed into hospital with the norovirus a few years back.  But at least this time it was an all in-house affair.

So I crawled out onto the top of the green this morning to blip this for you.  My temperature is still hanging around but the fresh air felt good.

Today I should have been going to a memorial service for a friend who died unexpected last month.  Sis has gone anyway as she was asked to read one of the poems she wrote after her husband died.  When I realised which one it was I was glad I didn't go.  It's much too sad.

I've attached it below in case you're interested.  I hope she won't mind (if she does, I'll remove it).  Meanwhile  my comments are off for now and I'll announce hearts and stars for WFW22_07 in my journal tomorrow.

Thanks to you all and stay well  xx



The Lark Ascending
by Vanessa Furse Jackson

How, at the end, that lone violin catches
flight, song rising beyond comprehension
till it slips through silence in a thread of blue.

I was pathless in the dark forest when we met,
a stranger stumbling a new country, voiceless
among wild birds crying incoherently.

You gave me such gifts. Mind, hearing, sight
illumined. Thousands of geese rose as one for us,
goldfinches swirled in the milkweed, trilling,

and I understood. I opened my palm, life-lines
to a smaller land where sea and sky become one
and the cliff grass, green, hides singers in it

that spring up as if fired from under the ground,
quick in a spiralling glory of voice, the poets,
the skylarks who soar so enviably close to God.

Back and forth from your land to mine we flew,
both of us carrying the other’s life as our own
in joy, as if the ascending music had no end.

How, alone now, I stand on the green cliffs,
where the larks still lift into infinite threads
of blue. And it is your song I am listening to.