village life – Page 19 – don't confuse the narrator

“first there is a mountain”

Every time there’s a break in the storms and the clouds start to peel back from the mountains, I hear the jangle of Donovan’s lyrics in my head.

cloud peeling from the mountains after storms

There is a mountain may not be a poem, but the line “The lock upon my garden gate’s a snail” is poetry I’d be proud to have written.

Perhaps I should re-read some of the popular philosophy books on my shelf: they certainly provided plenty of inspiration in the Sixties.

notes for a poem

Bonfire smoke mixes with drizzle.
From beyond the olive grove,
the stink of pigs rises defiant.

end of the season

The lack of rain meant that most vegetable plots didn’t do very well this year, but there is still a tangle of tomato vines straggling alongside next door’s pig sty.

Seeing the plants reminded me of a line from this piece, which, to judge from the pumpkins, was probably written in late September. It was published in South Bank Poetry Magazine back in summer 2009, so I shall resist the temptation to start tweaking it now.
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Thor’s day

Like medicine that’s “everso nice when the nasty taste’s gone”, several days of torrential rain left has everywhere washed and bright and sparkling:

I expect there will be more storms later, but I’ve tipped the spiders out of my red wellies and found my hand-knitted winter socks, so I’ll be all right.
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progress

Hemmed in by mountains,
they built church spires –
antennas to speak to God. Now,
high-rise office blocks and flats
impede the signal.

(The village in the photo has grown enormously since I first visited seven or eight years ago. The pine on the left of the picture kindly obscures the crane perched up on the heights in the north, while the one on the right obscures the modern apartment blocks that remain unfinished to the south east, victims, apparently, of the crisis in the Spanish construction industry.)