Summer Sunday

Artist D Luckins

 

O Curlew, cry no more in the air,

Or only to the water in the West;

Because your crying brings to my mind

passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair

that was shaken over my breast:

there is enough evil in the crying of the wind.

 

William Butler Yeats

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Sunday

Sunday, surely a day for chasing sun, not shadows?

Waking from a fractured sleep, where fractions

of my heatwave dreams still held me in their grip,

I rose to walk in my garden where a riot of  roses

had joined forces with lilac

and wild honeysuckle was chasing the exuberant ramblers. 

I took in their sensual delights as their blooms

smiled at the world with such a joyous expression.

The songbirds’ chorus was drowning the valley,

the river joined in with its gentler, summer melody.

There seemed to be so many shades of green,

the skies were wide and blue, the sun seemed full to bursting,

the palette a perfect backdrop for a midsummer work of art.

I loved how the birds nest in every nook and cranny

(whatever a cranny may be) and then I remembered

that yesterday on the Epynt mountain, an old friend had returned,

I had seen a curlew, and realised I had so missed its eerie, heartfelt, cry.

Soon my bad dream’s grip was loosened and all worries were forgotten,

for there is always hope in nature’s balmy days like these,

days to savour in the dark and sometimes trying times of winter.

 

Cait O’Connor


PS   I have posted some of my Summer Sunday photos on my other blog, Cait's Photos which can be found here