A CERTAIN WAY

When the light is a certain way

and it is a particular time of evening

late spring, afternoon over, not yet dusk,

and always in the country, some things

up close – bluebells, cow parsley,

a gate you can lean on to look out

over only fields, birdsong,

you stoop, kneel, sometimes

in your best trousers, over a flower,

a bright cuckoo-pint perhaps,

your camera angled precisely, carefully.

Always I am walking away,

searching for other flowers for you,

idly, in the late sunshine

and always I turn, happening on you

from a distance, hunched over the flower,

intent, things softening at the edges –

a wood full of bluebells, the road

half-hidden by trees. I look so hard

tears blur the picture till you’re gone,

and only a vague landscape remains

in which you are a memory,

the cuckoo-pint undisturbed. A long time

I bear this. When I wipe my eyes clean

you re-emerge, click into place,

still holding that same pose,

and at last, move, look up, waving

and smiling, disturbing everything.

​

From Laureate Lines (Derbyshire County Council, 2007)

© Cathy Grindrod