I’m back in that field, naked
in mid-afternoon, stretched out
in summer sun as never now
for my skin’s sake, unshaded,
just off the lane in a field
at the city’s edge, unabashed
because it’s a weekday
and no-one will come.
Improvised days,
invented weeks.
Only the idle rich
were entitled to live this way
but I joined them, hardly rich
yet idle. So I see myself
in that field, on grass
that pillowed my form.
Working and playing hard,
we harden. Time races us
to dust, relentlessly
goading. The ‘global race’
is a global treadmill
but in fear, we acquiesce
and even our rulers
work too hard.
In that Worcestershire field,
away from the shade,
I knew nothing of that madness
and was re-born of the sun
on a weekday, heretically.
Back there in thought, I grasp
what it is to live, to be brief.
It was over so soon, but it was.
.
Norman Jope
Pic: Nick Victor