~ Loubes-Bernac
to the west a mile or so distant
across the emergent vines
a dumbed cracked chapel bell
calls out across the valley
regularly two minutes late,
a dull clang more a vain cry
for help than solemn call to prayer,
it’s early and will be hot today
so we wake before the sun is
fully risen to enjoy the sweet
heady scents of dawn,
newly harvested grass rolls
stand like inert cattle, silently
facing the sunrise atop a short
regrowth of wild flowers
rustic barns half-built or
half falling down,
old stone houses, paint
peeling, shuttered firmly
against the torpid midday heat,
there is industry here, unseen
commerce that quietly tumbles
through the day, arresting only
for the sanctity of midday and
a long fulfilling lunch,
ancient tractors abandoned
standing idly, hidden amongst
tall grasses, play hide and
seek with the passing years,
this petit-village sleeps in the
daytime, its young fledged
to brighter lights
by early evening all is quiet,
the stifling quietude that
smothered the land, accepts
a vanquished, surrender and
once more people quietly stir
within the cooling blaze, as the
sizzling cacophony of crickets
ushers in the twilight
~ Le Chat
first to greet me, early
before the rest wake
always in French of course,
a long accented miaow,
she’s undoubtedly a local
but of no fixed abode
sleeps under the olive
or dozes on the giant
rolled grass bales in the
field next door grazing
on the foolhardy mice,
on occasion she struts
around the pool posing as
a young Brigitte Bardot, dark
mascara splashes beneath
each wary feline eye, long
exaggerated languid strides,
yesterday quite by mistake
she almost caught a tiny lizard
that escaped without its tail,
whilst it amused her for a time
she’s far more proficient
with field mice
~ Being Here
an evening sun pale marmalade
burnishes the hooped terracotta
roof tiles with a heavily laden brush,
it’s taken a week to stop thinking
what the time is back in England
now I can’t remember the day,
my life has slowed, has become one
with this languorous pastorale, I
have changed, eased, become calm,
in the field, wild flower heads
hover like tiny white parachutes
over the grasses as insects do,
nudged gently by the warming breeze,
I consider life, family, some of whom
are here with me and wonder
why we didn’t move here when
they were merely babes,
it is of course a heady spell, cast
bewitched by the gift of time, a
soporific imbalanced hex that
mesmerizes my emotions,
I can breathe here, think here
write here, be me here!
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