I

I learnt this week
that time and distance
can be friends to memory
their respective lengths
only wet and sharpen
the edge of love

but for us dear friend
we hold hard to hope
that we may
one day soon
share the present
and live each moment
in each other's heart.

II

Hearing you on Holkham beach
- whose soul is greater than the ocean
whose spirit stronger than the sea -
did I doubt for a moment
that you, though buffeted
by a cold east wind
would never age for me,
nor fade, nor die.
Nor you for me (she said)
Goodbye, my love,
a thousand times goodbye.
Write me well (she said)
and turned and ran.

III

The Reedham ferry was but a river's width
and yet I stood at the water's brink
and watched the reeds quiver in the wind,
watched the rain splatter on the puddled path.

All around to the human eye
this valley, a plain of grassland
broken only by reed-fringed pools,
was a gentle, unpeopled, easy place.

The absence of relief left
no fixed frame of reference.
Places apart from one another
would concertina and merge.

Tempted to cross I waved a no
to the ferryman in his quayside hut
then turned and walked quickly
back down the long, low road.