Welsh Summer Afternoon.

Whisper in the summer garden,
whisper of a small flicker
of finger touching wind,
of lifting fringes
from herbaceaous borders,
of hollyhocks bowing to lupins
prior to the dance,
of roses drooping
petal weary with heat hung haze.

Here is a drift of air,
breathed out softly,
then hush
and quiet again.

Nothing, but nothing
can break this tranquility
in it's shades and shadows
of a passing afternoon,
gathered around a squat stone cottage
bound to earth
by four hundred years of occupancy,

with walls a murmering,
agreeing and disagreeing
on who did reside within,
stretched from post medieval squalor
humans and animals alike
crammed into an excrement stenched commune,
to twenty first century
buy us a quaint old cottage
and play at country living.

Walls and trees have seen it all,
have dismissed it all
and drifted back to a summer
sleep-dazed afternoon.

© Berenice Dunford 2003