Balanced on a Moment

 

Atop the Common Village Hill,

My favourite place to be.

Sun splintered into little orbs

Amid a golden hazy sea.

 

The misty morning dew so fresh

And yet not fresh enough to wash away

The cares.

For what memories

Occupy such a place as this...?

 

The place unchanging

But the person never to remain

Unchanged;

Never for even a second the same.

 

A running child’s hand that brushes ears of corn

Or teenager that runs as rain pours

And drops the rebel cigarette on the plain

To a full-grown woman sporting a ring that sparkles

Like those splintered orbs

On a photo film pane.

 

And our stage at any certain age

Is an abstraction of our whole:

We are, all of us,

From birth to death

In a diaphanous cloud of being

– Balanced on the moment.

​

And peppered here and there

These moments fall upon this space;

This hill of Cranham Common, a favourite place.

 

Across the valley, a church steeple towers;

In spring sprung an abundance of flowers

And so much green on the trees

Covering branches, in summer unseen,

Naked winter branches bare beneath.

 

And sometimes bare am I, and sometimes whole,

With cares dispelled.

 

Yet on this hill, both here and not,

Where memories surge,

My abstracted beings converge…

 

Balanced on a moment

Atop of Cranham Common Hill.