A Vendre

We pause to watch the supping fingerlings
break the glass of the bottle green water,
perfect circles, brief, before fading.
A family of swallows are also feeding on the dapping fly
and make their own dinner plate ripples
as they wheel and dive between us.
Then there it is, canalside.
A Vendre, almost a ruin,
a peeling painted sign for wine
half on the ancient splintered shutter
and half the crumbling rendered wall.
We both look, our thoughts colliding silently,
the steps from the panelled verandah,
a perfect jetty, the porch,
the curve of the canal and willows on the bend.
We could sell beer and wines
and wave to bargees with a knowing smile.
How much I wonder, you say?
And much, more to put it right.
Eventually we idle away,
our fleeting new life dream
fades around the bend
leaving swallows to their chaotic repas.

© Graham Sherwood 09/2012

Hameau

From our lofty position above the plough
the Hameau forms a Y-shape,
a rough grass lane bends taught
like a thick tensile blade from left to right,
an ancient cart track cuts an axis against the mow.

Seven cottages lie cradled here,
each roof taking on a different aspect,
like sentries on guard, waiting
to repel the wolves that will surely come
bounding from the newly churned furrows.

But for now, no noise
save the twilight crackle from the fields,
where other bovine guards diligently stare
but offer no alarm in their ambivalent armour.
We wait.

Corn blond, then gold submit to russet
then sentries set their light
and from the futile ramparts
peer into the dusk
that hides the dangers of the night.

© Graham Sherwood 9/2012

Papadigm

It begins today,
the anniversary,
if that is the right word for it.
Today, I officially become older than my father,
twenty-five years in the making.
What did I think would happen?
A message from the hereafter or something,
congratulations,
of course not,
none of us ever believed in paradise.
But nonetheless today my face will supplant his,
my mirror to his photographs.
He will never look like this,
and from here on in
I am his senior in my reveries.
I will teach him things now,
finally my student after sixty-one years,
our roles reversed and he,
with the same inquisitive expression
that often sat upon my brow, will be my pupil.
He will ask me new questions.
Where shall I begin?

© Graham Sherwood 09/2012