I wasn’t that sure about a short walk. My usual walks
anywhere are based on the availability of a toilet. And it looked like rain was
about to spill. My brolly was in the boot of the car.
We decided it wasn’t really a day for walking. One of us
was really not up to it so we drove the minibus up to the woods. Beside the
woodland classroom, on the veranda, under a sloping roof, was a picnic table that we
could all sit around.
The topic was autumn. The forest wasn’t quite there yet –
just the occasional splash of golden leaves on an otherwise green leafed tree.
Autumn isn’t my favourite time of year. I’m a spring girl at heart. Autumn speaks to
me of short days, long nights and an absence of much required sunlight. It’s
not the absence of heat that bothers me, but I need my dose of sunlight.
We listened to a few autumn inspired songs and there was
a sheet of famous poems - Yeats and his season of mists and mellow
fruitfulness. We settled into writing. I
made lots of notes but there wasn’t an emerging poem in the words or phrases. I
had an idea of a just-before-bedtime feel about the forest. The year of spring with its furious bursting
of life, and summer with its enjoyment of sunshine and breezes was not yet at
the winter sleeping under the snow blanket stage. It was as if the forest was
in the time just-before-bedtime. There was a changing of the outdoor playing
clothes of green, to the indoor almost-bedtime of something softer and gentler
like gold. I know some children that resent going to bed and put it off, and
put it off, and get grizzlier by the moment.
The forest seemed to embrace the winding down of the year.
Short poems are good, right? We sat around the picnic table and
read the things we had written. As ever, I recognised that I was in good
writing company. There were poems and
pictures of squirrels and the autumn scavenge for food to hide away. There were
poems of blackberry picking and pie recipes to bake them into. There were
childhood memories, and observations about the wood itself and the dogs and
children we could hear exploring.
A forest drifts
into rest
Bright green garb
softens to gold
As birds sing
lullaby songs
I liked my line about the birds singing lullaby songs. It’s
a first draft. I will plough through my
notes to see if I can see some other gems in my scratchings.
We had been there no more than ten minutes or so when it
began to rain. Such rain! It was the lightest sprinkling of raindrops. We were
under the shelter of the sloping roof. The sun was shining on the rain creating
what looked like as gossamer jewelled shawl.
So light was the rain and the so delicate was the sunshine hitting each tiny
drop – it really was beautiful. Turn your head just a smidgen to the right and
there was no rain at all.
“We’re in a rainbow!” someone declared. Had we been back
in the town looking up at the forest, we would have seen the rainbow. But we were too close to see the rainbow from
the right distance and the right angle. Apparently
there is a way to see the rainbow you are in if the light comes from behind you
at just the right angle. I moved to
stand in the shower to see if I could have my rainbow moment but sun was at the
wrong angle and the curtain of water had moved on.
We headed back to a coffee shop to tinker with our words.
As ever, the afternoon didn’t disappoint. I might not
have written my best poetry but I sat in the quiet with a group of my friends
and we enjoyed the silence and the peace of a forest almost in autumn. There
was, as there always is, a lot of laughter, a lot of teasing, a knitted bonnet
that did the rounds of various heads and people enjoying each other’s company.
Take away the poetry and I would still want to be with there.
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