Friday 2 October 2009

I wish, I wish


Anne Hayward
The Ides of March


I wish I could
sit in the afternoon sun
with a book and a mug
and feel the breeze on my neck
and breathe the soft autumn smell
of damp leaves and ripe apples
and hear the subdued flap
of white linen drying
instead of
the hurry of emails,
and anxious students
and hasty academics
who rush past
to lectures.

I wish I could...

but that was another life
and I know in my heart
that the sun did not always shine.

14 comments:

  1. Ah, fondly (if wonkily) remembered scenes are often the most rewarding! I even feel nostalgic for our time living abroad, forgetting that for the final 6 months I was utterly desperate to come home for most of the time.

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  2. Oh Alice, you've summed it up yet again. I am missing being at home so much at the moment. Though I know that if I was, I would be bored.

    Perhaps yearning is just inevitable.

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  3. No it's odd how the memory eventually filters out the boring and unpleasant bits of those halcyon days

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  4. Oh that says it all perfectly (and so poetically). I guess what we really need is a bit of both... K x

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  5. It makes me glad to have a cold today - so I have skived off everything and have been enjoying sitting on the sofa knitting. I have to say that I would give up paid work tomorrow if I could, and would happily stay at home all day every day - I never get bored with my dogs and my garden and my needles - and I never thought I would ever say that! I must be getting old and staid.

    Pomona x

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  6. Distance lends enchantment to the view... which is probably just as well.

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  7. Who needs Confuscious when you have a friend like Gina :O))))))

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  8. Admit it. You were sitting outside because the house was full of stuff that needed to be put away.

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  9. Monica's got it - we all wish. Sigh...

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  10. I have only just found your site and I'm going to enjoy having a snoop around your lovely words :-)

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  11. I had the mug and book in hand a couple of times this summer. Then the the sheet fell off the line and into the sand pit, the baby fell down for the fifth time that day and the dog started barking maniacally. I packed up the book, the baby and the three year old and resigned myself to the village swings. The sheet went back into the wash. So much for idylls.

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  12. Perhaps that's the life to look forward to when you're sixty. That's my plan, anyway. If I survive parenthood.

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  13. Oh Alice, your words paint the most beautiful of pictures and express the sentiment so perfectly.

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