Sideburns

 

 

 

 

 

 Dear Reader,

 

 

The garden is looking very drab this week as if all life has left it.  But I did have just one rose left and here it is, and it smells gorgeous.  I think August is the  month I like least in the year as it is, of course, the end of something.  In May there is great excitement when the sky becomes blue and the sun shines for us after a dull and sometimes dreary spring.  And then the flowers begin to flourish with all their exotic colours and shapes to entrance us and make us happy and glad in the summer warmth. But August with its humidity and many sunless days reminds us of the coming of autumn while the flower beds disintegrate before our eyes.  In fact, I am very fond of the autumn, the beautiful colours of the trees and hedgerows all to enjoy, are a new beginning, a different time.  A time to re-think our lives and what we intend to do with them.

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From Gilbert White, 1787, August 26th, in Wiltshire

'Timothy, the tortoise, who has spent the lat two months amidst the umbrageous forests of the asparagus-beds, begins now to be sensible of the chilly autumnal mornings; and therefore suns himself under the laurel-hedge, into which he retires at night.  He is become sluggish, and does not seem to take any food.'

From Dorothy Wordsworth, 1800, August 31st, in Westmorland

'A great deal of corn is cut in the vale and the whole prospect, though not tinged with a general autumnal yellow, yet softened down into mellowness of colouring, which seems to impact softness to the forms of hills and mountains.  At 11 o'clock Coleridge came when I was walking in the still clear moonshine in the garden.  William was gone to bed and John also, worn out with his ride round Coniston.  We sate and chatted till half past three.  Coleridge read us a part of Christabel.'

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Sideburns

Astonished, I see the sideburns
the slicked up hair
the ill-fitting suit,
large red hands
jolting it back on the shoulders
with awkward gesture,
at a young man's funeral
in the village church.
White lilies fill the air
with their sweet scent,
while solft music plays.
I see tears on every cheek,
sad young women, and men too -
there to seek some comfort
from the vicar's words.

I blink and thought
I saw Thomas Hardy standing
in a nearby pew,
back in time from his day.
The ancient poet seemed to be
embodied in the blood and lives
of this congregation,
among whom nothing has changed
over the years,
not the people, nor the service,
and death is still great sorrow.

But there is tea and beer
a the Bull Inn,
gossip and laughter
tears and memories, as
life's cycle keeps turning,
our beginnings and our endings
the only certainties.

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With very best wishes, Patricia