___________
As a child, there was a place that was
so deeply familiar to me
that I never had to think
about it, for it was simply there,
and in it I lived quite happily, alone,
but, as the long summer of my childhood
began to turn to a more turbulent season,
I somehow lost the way there, and
even the memory of that place
slowly faded from my mind
until no trace of it was left.
Many years passed, until as a man
at the cross-roads of his life, and feeling
a deep need to commune with nature,
and for the peace of solitude, and a need
to escape the narrow streets of the city,
I took to walking alone in the country-side.
Thus it was, as I was wandering, one day,
in a lonely forest, that I became lost
in a dark and unfamiliar place,
and, while searching for the way
through thick and tangled foliage,
I came across an overgrown path,
long unused, and followed it, in the hope
that it may lead me to where
I could recover my direction.
But the path led on, and on, and deeper in,
until I came to a place, that,
like the faintest waft of a long forgotten aroma,
a memory buried deeply in my soul was stirred.
There was a high wall overhung with branches, a place
that might easily have passed unnoticed, most of the wall
being lost to sight beneath a mass of vegetation
clinging to its stony cracks and ledges,
creeping, and twining, and flourishing there,
tendrils of new growth, ivy, and jasmine,
fragrant in the warmth of the sun,
reached out greenly above dead and tangled
undergrowth, such was the age of the wall,
and climbing roses, whose pink buds,
swayed weightlessly in a gentle breeze.
Noticing another detail, strangely familiar,
I pushing though the foliage towards it,
to find, half-hidden in the shadows, an ancient gate,
set back within two great stone pillars,
atop each of which was an urn, cracked and old
and encrusted with lichen and wound round with ivy,
suggesting that this gateway had been lost
for centuries, and suggesting, also,
where the rusted bars reached up
becoming lovely twisted forms and leafy shapes
wrought by some long-forgotten artisan,
ancient craft and, more, a deep love of workmanship.
Deep and long-lost memories began to stir in me,
and grow, both with a rising sense of joy
and filled with wonder, yet, disbelief
that this could really be, which sharpened
further my senses, and I somehow,
managed to turn the rusted latch,
and though the heaviness of the gate
resisted me at first, put my weight against it firmly,
until it creaked slowly inwards on its stiff hinges,
and, as spellbound as a child, I stepped through
into the calm and peace of a place
I knew as deeply as myself,
a place that had remained unchanged,
these many years, like a once-loved part of myself,
so long neglected and found anew.
Inside this lovely place, there was a soft
silence broken only by occasional bird-calls,
ringing and sounding, and the murmur of the breeze.
Where once I had chased butterflies, wildly leaping,
I was now filled with stillness, and gazed
around in awe, with more reflective, yet no less
wondering eyes than a child would have,
into this lovely garden, and up into the
soft and leafy canopy crisply illuminated overhead
in greens and golds, and the deeply shadowed places,
below the trees, and the lawns and fragrant flower-beds,
flecked with colour and dappled with the sun,
and at the light itself, the clarity of which
seemed to expand my mind, leading to thoughts
of a greater grandeur existing in this place,
with all its forms of beauty so lovely
as to lighten the heart, which, burdened
by the cares of a demanding careless world
had so long cried out for peace and solitude.
I followed the path, which went inward,
and then sloped down to where wide stone steps
wound steeply down in places, and statues,
half-hidden in the shadowed bushes, of Pan,
and woodland nymphs, and a satyr,
green with moss and lichen, emerged
like old friends to greet me as I descended,
now beneath towering elms which formed a high vault,
through which the divinely lovely light
streamed down in rays, as from the transept windows
in a dimly-lit cathedral, and then
I stepped out of this semi-shadowed place
into the sunlight where wide lawns,
bordered by beds of lilies and purple irises,
sloped down to a mirrored lake.
There, on a headland, stood
a small temple shining white in the sunlight,
the round Greek tholos, that I knew so well,
a place of coolness on a hot day, a place
of calm and perfect beauty, where,
as a child, sitting on its steps, I would
dangle my feet in the water, sending
ripples across the lake to fracture
the reflected colours of the willows
on the opposite bank, or feed the swans.
So, here I sat, once more, so many years hence,
a grown man, with all the reflections of the lake
around me, the greens, yellows, and russet browns,
with brilliant patches of sky blue moving between them,
and watched fish lazily sliding below
the water-lily pads at my feet, and the dragon-flies
hovering and sweeping above the mirrored surface.
The warmth of the sun,
the peaceful beauty of the place,
and the enchantment of finding it once again,
drew me into a state of deep repose and reflection,
in which my mind was filled with a sense
of mystery, and a sense of the vastness of time,
and a strange understanding came over me
that this lovely place had always been here,
close to me, but lying just beyond my perceptions,
simply waiting for me to remove the masks and veils
of mundane adult life, and regain once more
the child's wonder at the world and innocent ability
to see and accept it as it is, and thus
had been able to find the path once more.
And, on the distant edge of these deep reflections,
I heard a sound behind me, and
as I turned towards it, that lovely woman
I used to know so well, the woman
who used to come to me in my dreams,
whose smile is like sunshine and laughter like music,
and whose grey-eyed soulful gaze I could never escape,
sat gently down beside me and, without a word,
slipped her arm through mine,
my soul, my dear, dear soul, clad in a dark red gown,
that lovely being of the deepest sensibility,
that lover of goodness and tranquility,
she met me there and sat beside me silently.
Such was the reverent and expansive feeling of her
presence, I was filled with awe
that I had found her once again, my beloved,
so long lost to me, and I was inspired with
the deepest gratitude that the ancient gate
had appeared before me, and had opened to my touch,
and I had been allowed to return once more
to this tranquil place, to be with her once again,
and to walk with her, arm in arm, in our garden.
