Place of Learning

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