Words by Linda Sargent
February sky-blue’s always
outrageous here, it says
“Hell - the sea’s a blink away
I can do what I bloody well like -
so there!”
We’re walking just where
Sussex campus and Stanmer
Park wash together, a raggle of raw beeches
breasts the wandered, jogged-on banks,
pricking out their new needle lines
like brash usurpers, in my memory’s eye,
callow and untried
by winds which shout destruction
in one blasted no-messing breath,
and in the next yell out a casual
blow of death and then whip on
inland to surprise some smug,
cosy-tangled country woods.
A lot can topple in nearly fifty years.
But this familiar, scrubbed clean air
offers time unwritten,
gifting ahead.
Cover Photograph by Tillie Lam