1454

Firle 2 5 15

Rain clouds drift across the beacon's head

Greying the damp spring fields, softening skies

As if muslin veils enshroud the Downs

Keeping them snug within a gentle void.

The dipoles and the ridge path where we walk

Have disappeared and even closer to

Swallows swoop then vanish from my sight,

Sheep rest, blurred against the misted hedge.

The train is quiet, a distant mobile call

Alone breaking the rhythm of the wheels.

Empty stations pass unnoticed till

The downs are gone and placid to the south

The sea yawns as the evening closes in.

Brian Hick 2.5.15

©copyright Sally Hick 21.4.26

 1344

After a morning's downpour

The dipoles on Firle Beacon

Are silhouetted by the sun

In ever-bluing splendour.

Brian Hick February 2014

©copyright Sally Hick 21.3.25

 1188 Isle of Wight - various oddments (2)

Six empty tables between me and a family munching burgers

Then the window across the Duver, houses half hidden by trees

Grey and distant the open downs, where I would rather be than here

Oh anywhere than here

And why? It makes no sense for you are here as much as you are there

But I'm not here when my heart aches to be there on that distant hill

alone with you and the wind...

Brian Hick July 2012

©copyright Sally Hick 20.6.24

 

Equinox on Firle Beacon

 

 

Standing here, I sense the Earth is waiting;

The harvest over, the barns replete with grain,

The fields bare, receptive to the plough

Gouging out the furrows for the Spring.

 

Up here the silence of September seeps

Into my soul, the traffic far below

Muted, seen but as distant movement

In a landscape unchanged for centuries.

 

A flock of sheep across the valley moves

Slowly up the close cropped slope towards

The swollen shoulders of our Southern Downs

From where the sea gleams distant and aloof.

 

This Beacon draws me out and draws me in

To the deep joys of Earth and Sea and Sky

At one with this perceptive Trinity

Piercing to a truth too true for words.

 

I wait, as the Earth waits, trusting that Love

Will find me out, like the returning Dove.

 Brian Hick 

©copyright 2021 S Hick