(I.P.) At the Top of the Hill...

My favourite place to be –
where an east wind
chides these frowning fields;
seeks out secret burrows
of night’s creatures –
trees and bushes wreathed
in mists of memories

Here, in rural East Anglia, we put down our roots, some ten years ago. My husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease at the relatively young age of fifty-four, and was forced to take early retirement. The kids having flown the nest, and money – tight, we had little option but to ‘downsize'. Up until then, home had been a rambling, seventeenth century ‘cottage’, on three floors, plus basement. Anyway, the truth of it was, we had no need of such a ‘millstone’ round our necks – constantly in need of repair, so we plumped for a modern, chalet bungalow. The bonus being, that modest though our new home was, we’d also acquired ‘a thousand acres of sky’ – totally surrounded by farmland; our ‘garden’ merely an extension of the adjacent countryside; a local landowner having sold off the land years before to a builder; hilly, as it was, and impractical to farm.

Reluctant to move, I’d been having a reoccurring dream for months about finding the ‘right house’, and always, the message in my dream was the same; it didn’t matter a toss about the inside of the property (providing, of course, there was room to accommodate my precious reconditioned, grand piano, which I’d scrimped and saved for in my twenties) it was the view from its windows which was paramount. The day we went to see the house – up with our local estate agent, forever sticks in my mind...The day we climbed ‘our hill’ for that very first time, and I knew, then and there, ‘this was it’.

And a keen, March wind
blew across that barren land
and sunbeams skidded
on frozen puddles
between the furrows,
and a gathering fog
choked all sound;
sliced through the silence
a muntjak’s bark

It is this hill which keeps me sane. I come up here to write, often. We have a tiny ‘summerhouse’ – not big enough to swing a cat in, and which had to be re-tethered, after transporting itself halfway down the hill in a recent storm. Presently, it has more broken panes of glass than sound ones, but at least it shelters me from the worst of the rain, if I’m caught in a shower.

I came up here every day in the first few weeks after our daughter lost her long battle with cancer; to think, and to record those thoughts for posterity.

As a woman I have learned
all about waiting – smelt
the rain, listened
to the last rays of sun
as they dim
and dreamt of the days
I guarded my children –
soft and sleeping

Here, where the pheasants eat digestive biscuits out of my hand...where I watch the stars, run rings around the moon, I am learning to welcome time, not dread it, and like a cloak, wrap it around me. Here it is always today. Here, it is always ‘now’.