On this beautiful spring day in February
With delphinium-blue skies and cheeky
Crocuses splashing purple and dazzling
Daffs nodding agreement in this mild April
Zephyr of a breeze –we arrive in flaming June
And then do folk long to go on pilgrimage..
Modern pilgrimages tend to interiority
We seek relics of a past that cannot last.
I imagine that if a poet who I have in mind
Were given one more day on this mortal sod
This would be the kind of mild, English day
That she would choose. Attempta to resurrect
The past lead to an unforced dereliction
Of the present. This singular, quantum moment
Of flux and uncertainty which lies within the hollowed
Out bridge in time. The fleeting past and uncertain future
Create just so many days like this that we are allotted,
Maybe a baker’s dozen over a whole life-time,
When we truly notice such things
The flowers and the trees and these swirling Turner-skies
Above this benign and blessed old country of ours.
We lose ourselves, as Chaucer did so-very-long ago while
Watching his pilgrims wend their weary ways to Canterbury.
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