Summer Canvas

Contributor: Andrew P Weston

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Childhood memories of a British summer,
Amid landscapes of fickle mood,
Of sundrenched days,
Spent in languid relaxation,
Or hiding from windswept drudgery,
In a blanket of cloud and rain.

My playground was the mountain pass, or bone-chilling tarn,
A conical pike, and fast-running river,
Ruddy, windswept, wild-grass moors,
No Xbox required.
Not when isolated, ancient oak,
Served as castle against a thousand foes.

Free-roaming sheep, as wild as any savage,
Cropped the hills and flowered the slopes,
In mottled hues of cream and grey,
Tones, that blended with the moss riddled slates,
Of antiquated village and russet lanes,
With telephone kiosks of pillar-box red, in contrast.

I had it all, in the spring of my childhood,
A Wordsworth and a Constable of immaculate hue,
Lay before me each and every year,
Absorbing me into its multifarious medium,
And immortalizing summer’s splendid canvas,
Forever in my heart.


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Ex military, ex police veteran, now living on the sunny Greek Island of Kos with a growing family of rescue cats. Can be seen most days getting easily confused by just about anything.