Spun Gold

What a truly extra-extraordinary week we have had here in Blighty. Waking day after long day to golden syrupy amber light. first squeezing round the edges of the blinds and then pouring in, pools of  honey collecting in the folds of the bed covers.

I have been stupefied by this sudden wealth. All seems heightened, as though the world is suddenly sharper, magnified and it has never looked more glorious. Time seems stretched, elongated such golden days that seem endless and frozen in time. Each morning I have  had that fizzy, frilly, summer-saulty tummy that I felt as child as the summer holidays stretched before me. The feeling you have when you head out early into a day full of so much promise.

Waking early, I have been striding out with Mr.Boodle on ever longer walks, my heart soaring in the warmth bouncing from the baked soil. The fields are golden stubble now and the leaves are beginning to change into their Autumn hues.I have been very quiet, dazed I think or perhaps a little drunk on the light, but bursting with joy inside!

My thoughts have turned to Thomas Hardy, William Barnes and Vaughan-Williams and I think perhaps I have felt a little of their rapture at the English landscape.

On Sunday I heard a poem on the radio by Sylvia Townsend-Warner and it seemed to me to be the perfect epitaph for this strange glorious week. Summing up beautifully my own response, especially the transient nature of each passing second and not wanting to miss a molecule of it....

GO THE LONG WAY, THE LONG WAY HOME

SYLVIA TOWNSEND-WARNER

Go the long way, the long way home

Over this gate the leads where the three lanes meeting, delay

Look well at that field of hay

Eye closely the drilled loam

Finger the springing corn

Count every petal of the hedgerows and the guelder rose

Under the bosom of the blossomed elder

Stay, linger, browse deep on all this green and all this growing

Slant cheek to the sweet air

With deep greetings survey the full leaf boughs, like water flowing

The corn waves hurrying uphill as the wind blows

Look overhead into the blue

Look round watch this bird fly and that bird settle

with slow treading and sure greet the assuring ground

Go slowly, for slowly goes this midsummer day

And this is the last time you will come this way

Go the long way, the long way home

Aye and when you arrive and the sighing gate falls to

Go slowly, go heedfully your garden through

Breathe in the spice pinks

Turn face up to the soft ripe rose that wags aloft

Nod to the old rake, rub thumb across spades edge

Measure the potato hills and the tall bean rows

Pledge cherry and currant bush

Pledge lily and lily leaf spear

And rebel the nettles waving along the hedge

Look closely, look well, see how your garden grows

Ponder yourself, even enter the secret cell of this years honeycomb

Look long, for long has this been yours, long been dear

This is the last time you will stand here

Go the long way, the long way home

Though you are weary hasten not ghost to ground

Tarry this last hour out

Take your last look around

Greet finally the earth, greet leaf and root and stock

Stand in your last hour, poised like the dandelion clock

Frail ghost of the gaudy raggle-taggle that you were

Stand up oh homing phantom

Stand up intact and declare the goodness of earth

The greatest good you have found

Er the wind jolts you and you vanish like the foam.

And now? The spell has broken, I think this last week I may have been visited by Rumplestiltskin! He has had me spinning golden thread........

I too have been taking the long way.........

.....home xXx