Now I was young and easy. Led
entranced under plum tree blossoms
drifting along the sloping drive
to white-washed walled Stud Farm.
This ecstasy of being cool pig-pink
sunk happy in a mud brown wallow.
    
Then I was bold and carefree,
working among the barns
busy about the happy yard
on the farm that was home.
Young once only, in my kingdom
as Time let me live my dreams.
    
It carried me over and over again
in daytime walking or running,
it was lovely, the sweet scents:
fragrant hay field’s cut grass
and herbage fully sun dried.

Or, I pedalled in evenings
led by bicycle-dynamo-beamed
light under the stars to sleep.
Above me the barn owls were
claiming skies of swallows clear.
Coppice hooting in preludes,
there bats about soon flitted
where  tiny glow worms flickered.

Then to dawn awake: the farm,
mist-shrouded as a roamer white
dew cloaked, returning to hear
****’s crowing from hen coops
black cawing crows in the trees.

Glimpsing the same clear sky
changed from yesterday
into today’s white and blue.
The same sun but born again.
The distant church bells ringing.

Nothing I cared for more
than pink piglets new born,
just meadow-birthed lambs
and black and white calves
that would take up my time:
to hold me to the farm forever
released from orphanage hold.

Oh! I was so young and easy.
In the mercy of its means,
Time held me as I was flying
while I threw off captive
chains - at last unshackled - free.

Tobias