The Little Church at Ebony
Daffodils at Sissinghurst
Fairfield Church
The River Rother
Romney Marsh
Smugglers of the Marsh
Dungeness
Winchelsea Beach
The Daffodil Church
I returned to the sea, to Winchelsea.
To relive that sunlit happiness
In my childish paradise, with sweet intensity.
Seeking the clearest blue of limpid pools
Hiding creatures (transparent pink or brown?)
Who preferred to stay unseen.
Watching with wonder, down
Into the slow and delicate unfurling
Of frilled anemone fronds,
Black cherry purple or greyish-green.
Unravelling the slithery skein of ropes
For shiny sea-lace skipping.
Touching the warm and sparkling shallows
Between vast, deserted hot ridged slopes
Of blackened wood and fossil forest,
And the sprinkled salt and pepper sand.
Absorbing the glorious glowing colours
Of enchantment between me, the sea and land.
But when I return today to the sea,
The puffed up monster clouds
Of so-called wisdom, present a bleak reality,
Eclipse the beautiful golden dream.
For I'm a child no longer and not so easily
Beguiled by the sunshine colours of a paradise seen.
How to dispel the drab, the weary unending
Cynicism of the adult mind?
That pure delight and childish joy
Now seem impossible to find.
Tainted with all-knowing but unseeing eyes
All is viewed in muted shades of grey
Imprisoned under the dullest of sullen skies
Hanging leaden overhead.
Those exquisite glowing colours
Between me, the sky, the land and sea
Have gone. The enchanted memory is dead.
© Helen Lyon 2001
All Rights Reserved
