Sunday, April 6, 2008

Bamboo Shoot: JOURNEY

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It was a day to be near water. Overhead, the sun had become a blinding star; and as I drove through Lyndhurst and Beaulieu towards Lepe, all over the swim of heath and road summer’s foals had dropped like autumn chestnuts.

gorse-heath and tarmac .........................inescapable heat –
one shimmer – the skyline trees .............young ponies lie motionless
drowning in it .......................................crows pick in droppings

Waves of tar, manure and dust lifted from the ground as the road ribboned its way through town and village, ran beneath short respites of ancient forest, and flowed across open heath to meander between seared and rank-sweet hedgerows. Not until I neared the coast did I find myself in narrow green lanes that let me breathe.
.

hedgerows baking hot.
White plates of Hogweed – distant
hush of sea on flint
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A large oak canopied the car. Yellow-buttoned Cat’s Ear, wild privet and honeysuckle brightened and spiced a well-worn path leading shoreward. And across The Solent, as in some badly taken photograph, the milk-washed thin dark landmass of the Isle of Wight hung between pewter sky and sparkling pewter sea – Cowes harbour visible but almost featureless.

It was the day of the Round the Island Race; but there was little wind, and though race yachts had long since gone, somewhere out of sight, sun and sailors were glowering at each other in conditions that enforced a shortening of the slowest race on record.

Midday passed. The tide ebbed in suffocating stillness. A few weekend boats, their numbered sails torn out of trigonometry books, still lay like litter in the island’s lee, drifting forlornly up and down between channel markers; while not far away, a man had waded out some fifty yards. And slack-tide happened with all the aura of the supernatural. When had I noticed that the flinty slop had ceased – that the sea had become motionless; that the clamour of gulls was only accentuating silence? Time itself seemed at a standstill – everything held in some non-locality of existence – a man up to his waist in water, the motionless drift of yachts. In that immeasurable instant, the energy of the spirit and of the whole Universe seemed drained into the water to power the recommencement of its tireless pendular swing … absurdly, came the thought of a small dog suspended over an unsuspecting parasol * … then, a ripple of light and air as some infinitesimal imperfection in the continuum tipped the balance back.

midday chorus ....................................with no perspective
on exposed rocks ..................................at such a distance
......................seagulls .................................................two yachts
screaming over something ....................idly converge

Much later, returning to my lodging, I stopped in Beaulieu for a scrambled egg tea – discussing the finer points of Escoffier’s method with the student chef-du-jour. Then, driving slowly on but finding the heathland still furiously hot in the closing afternoon, I stopped, left the car, and wandered aimlessly till sundown – its brief breath of cool air enhanced by the heat of the passing day.

a chestnut foal, ...................................sundown, and the cool wind
hesitant – with the setting sun .............over the chestnut foal’s ribs
in the summer gorse ............................runs a shudder
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by Bamboo Shoot
Salibury, Wiltshire, England
first published in Blithe Spirit 17.2, 2007



* cf. The New Accelerator by H. G. Wells

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