Shrivelled blossom falls
from dark green hedgerows
shaken by a foreign wind.
Dust flurries whirl and eddy,
dancing, spinning along
bone-dry lanes that lead to nowhere.

Across a beige, hay-scattered paddock
wide-eyed horses shake their heads,
and skitter from fence to fence.
In the distance a young girl
shouts unintelligibly to an unseen friend,
light livid on her white t-shirt.

“Hot day,” comments a passing old man,
“Enough blue up there
to tailor the Royal Navy.”
Under his arm a folded newspaper
screams silent headlines of drought
in some foreign land.

And within me a long-dormant memory awakes,
for this is not how things should be.
I hear innocent warnings sing
down the empty, echoing centuries;
“For Summer is i-cumen in,
and Winter is a-gone . . .”