Pines stood like these
Along the windy ridge
Where we so often walked
And much in love
Discussed a time to wed.
Beneath the trees
On those October days
So distant now
Our plans much favoured Spring
Until we said,
As of one heart and mind,
Why wait till then?
At Christmas let it be!
And so it was!
17 May 1985
On seeing a drawing by John Constable “Fir Trees at Hampstead, 1820”
Under the tangled late summer grasses
After the rain shower full the stream passes,
Flooding and gushing down through the bracken,
Not till the mill-pond does its flow slacken.
Down through red campion, hart’s tongue and wild bramble,
Over the boulders, see the stream scramble!
Lost in a tunnel of ferns by the roadside,
Hidden from view as it runs down the hillside,
Bullrushes, foxgloves, speedwell and mallow
Border its passage through fields lying fallow.
Down through the mill-race, through sluice gates turning,
Over the mill-wheel splashing and churning.
Round goes the wheel and the stones grind and grumble
And into the sacks the flour starts to tumble.
Here all is noise with the rumble and creaking,
But high in the loft where the sunlight is streaming,
On fat sacks of grain in the dust calmly seated,
The ghosts of past millers with smocks neatly pleated
Gossip of things as they once used to be,
While the stream rushes onwards down to the sea.
Quetivel Mill, St Peter’s Valley, Jersey
1979
By Stour’s waters, on a day
Of summer mists and sunlight pale,
I saw the tower of Dedham Church
And heard its bell across the Vale.
Yet time stood still for angels passed
In golden cohorts overhead,
And, like the play of light on hills,
The glory of their presence spread.
My blest companions drank with me
The silence of that mystic hour,
And, by their passing, stirred for me
The healing waters of the Stour.
April 1990
I have a homing instinct for the stars 
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