Tuesday 27 June 2017


Returning from Buxton


You set me down in the lane, not far,
just half-a-mile from the five-barred gate,
so weary from the tourist trail round
the pump room and pavilion gardens.

I stand entranced by the buttercup fields,
fat lambs tugging at their wary mothers,
and the slope pushing up to dense woods,
mystical and shadowed in bluish haze.

You know I need this solitude –
to admire the pair of sleek swallows
refining their high wire act and hear
pheasants rasp from fragrant hedgerows.   

Tempting to linger; but there you are
at the door waiting, and the path back
threads between high, hay-scented meadows.

                             Nearby, cars grumble over cattle grids.


© Sue Burley Rev. April 2015

(Published in Summer 2015 ed of  "The Dawntreader"

and "Old Malden News," June 2017.)