Dear reader,
I think this month of May, 2021, has been so depressing. I could never work out whether it had actually got any hotter or whether it was just cold and damp. It usually was cold and damp. The thermostat in my body doesn't seem to work very well and I often find I am hot when everyone else is cold or visa versa. So I am constantly putting layers of clothes on or taking them off. Mostly putting them back on this May. And I think we all long for a sight of the sun. Francis and I try to go for a walk every day but I must say I have no enthusiasm for an east wind blowing through me, straight from Siberia. So sometimes we just don't have a walk and end up frustrated having taken no exercise. Still today the elusive sun is actually shining and we intend to eat outside. Perhaps summer really has come at last.
*
From Samuel Pepys, 1662, May 29th, in Surrey
'With my wife and the two maids and the boy took boat and to Vauxhall, where I had not been a great while. To the old Spring Garden, and there walked long, and the wenches gathered pinks'.
From William Cowper, 1786, May 29th, Buckinghamshire
'The grass under my windows is all bespangled with dewdrops, and the birds are singing in the apple trees, among the blossoms. Never poet had a more commodious oratory in which to invoke his Muse'.
*
Loss
The old woman
totters slowly down the path.
Holding her hand we
go into the field
pick daffodils and buttercups.
Spring is on its way.
Later in her kitchen
she tries to say something, to find words
which seem to flutter away,
escape her, but she manages:
"I don't live
in this house, I live elsewhere."
She lies down on the sofa.
"I like looking at the sky" she murmurs,
and closing her eyes she falls asleep.
I kiss her on her pale, cold cheeks,
and weep.......
*
With best wishes, Patricia
No comments:
Post a Comment