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.)