Walking on plums

and summer ends, in seconds - I am adrift in a minky grey cloud

A very quick and quiet hello to all of you lovely readers, writers and curious passers by, I welcome you all.

This week I returned to the noise of ‘la rentrée’. The reason I’ve not had a second to write a poetic or even sensible word for too many days. Was I looking forward to it? Not really… summer has been short, full of unexpected frustrations due to that terrible storm and its seemingly never ending repercussions. I don’t feel particularly rested.

C’est la vie en France, or, maybe everywhere, I’ve been here so long I no longer know.

I was hoping to find time to update my about page or send out a newsletter to detail a few changes I have in mind but I have neither the details fully formed nor the time to arrange them so this will have to wait. And no, the hare, my beloved muse, is not quite right either, expect another change — humour my Gemini soul I beg you.

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Farewell summer days, farewell bare feet and arms and legs, cut off Levis and soft linen tops. Farewell late evening walks, cicadas and bees, farewell meadow flowers and tiny occupants hidden within, farewell golden light, you were fleeting and beautiful and you made my summer soul giddy with drunken delight but it’s time to sober up.

The week in random vignettes — because I am adrift.

• There is little time to dwell on the end of summer arriving this year, one day I am sweltering in shimmering waves of undulating heat across barley stubble in search of cool, the next — so reliably, September 1st — I am wrapping a warm sweater around my shoulders watching relentless rain falling from my window, water barrels overflowing and a storm river running through the courtyard.

  I am thinking about logs and stove and how we don’t have anything dry enough to burn in store yet — I must call Pierre.

  I am thinking of my sheep and how they need clean hay — I must call Christian.

  I’m thinking of the tomatoes still ripening on their vines.

  I am thinking summer is over as autumn arrives panting — damply — on its heels.

  Just like that, without an even a cool breeze as warning.

  The sun didn’t turn to wave au revoir… all that remains are the bare bones of summer rotting on sodden earth and prunes by the bucketful most of which I don’t have time to gather.

The dryer is filled (the scent is divine) the cupboards too, jam and pickles -enough for ten years!

• I return to class, return to habitudes I thought forgotten. Eight weeks is a long holiday, even so after two days I have the impression I have never left. So strange ad yet how easily and quickly the routine slips into place, how easily those summer days fall behind me, already adrift in passages of time with bits of me drifting with them. I stick back the pieces and turn to my work with surprisingly little effort concentrating on the humdrum, forcing ears and eyes to tune in; school hours daily rituals, chairs scraping newly polished floors, that teeth clenching, hair raising squeak of chalk on blackboards, canteen clatter, timetables and tears. Oh but the sound of a child laughing — was there ever anything more beautiful?

• A new moon rises. Rain falls for the entire day. I make a fatal mistake. Searching online for a long range weather forecast I read three and fall into an almost immediate deep and immoveable depression I know will take weeks to shrug off — the downside of having the world and all its information at our fingertips. I know also I will find the last of the plums on the ground. Mission accomplished, one less worry because I can’t tolerate waste in a world where so many have nothing.

• I am strangely and uncharacteristically nostalgic. My oldest cousin calls me out of the blue. We speak at length of our families in our distant lives. We remember my father, his favourite uncle, both our tears and smiles are abundant but it begins a wheel of reminiscing I am powerless to bring to a halt. Like time, like age, like the days passing that we have no control of and I don’t, all of a sudden, want to leave gently. I spend a sleepless night writing notes in my journal with Dylan Thomas’ villanelle turning on repeat in the small hours…

  Do not go gentle into that good night,
  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

• I relent, unwilling and with much scepticism, to buying myself a pair of trainers — is this still the right word — they arrive in the post very promptly; hideous modern things with not a scrap of elegance but they feel like I’m walking on clouds — my feet thank me.

• Other than to meander up and down the lane I have not walked upon my hill in days, my longing so furiously obvious in the few hours I have at home I wonder why husband and son don’t lock me out.

• I gather small compensation watching the clouds. They are no longer light feathery summer clouds but the heavy with the minky grey type of autumn. I watch them anyway, become obsessed with searching for a gap large enough for the sun to sneak through and hope the sun is searching too.

Slivers of sun burst through a grey palette just once. It felt like weeks of waiting - so strange to feel sad when it happened.

“For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again.”
― Haruki Murakami

The glitter in the grey, a shimmer in the dark.

• Visibly the landscape accepts autumn — I am not ready…

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Yours in hopeful longing

PS Usually on this day, or very close, I post my favourite photos of the month in the section A Coloured Month but having cycled a full year of months, at the risk of repeating myself I have decided to stop — July 2024 being last. If you would like to, you can re-read every one of the twelve I have posted — they are not paywalled and will remain so. I may (or may not) run a new cycle in coming years. Below you will find August 2023.

Stories I have loved this week; I have read many poems this week, mainly through a shortage of time to read longer pieces, also as a consequence of feeling adrift.

Troy Putney

— because who doesnt need somone to hold compassion with them?

Joy by Firelight

darren harley

— because we see you Darren and I know you see us too.

an intimate letter to a stranger

Fotini Masika

because she wrote a poem while sitting under a carob tree to let me know there were still butterflies and bees and “all kinds of hefty flying beings” and I am overwhelmed that someone so far from me can be linked by nature and words in this little square screen.

Poem #35