The rustic road threads its way leafily upwards –
And suddenly, you are there …
Beside, behind, before and beyond, enfolded in light,
are the shadow-dappled green and yellow contours
slipping one into the other,
trimmed with grasses, harvest-blanched,
freckled with sheep …
The quiet fluffy clouds dreaming lazily above,
like puffs of carefreeness drifting in seas of joy …
breathing the song of peace into the mind
brimming its chalice with mystical loveliness,
bequeathing a sacred stillness.
Mile upon mile of heathered hill and moorland,
mossy-mauve,
fern-feathered, a-hum with bees,
garmented with golden gorse, liquid bright,
like sundrops tumbled from the sky …
bejewelled with exquisite filigree of small wild flowers.
And below, in the velvet-verdured valley lie
clusters of silent humble cottages peeping shyly
from the secret folds of the quilted land,
where tumble softly, sweet, quenching, fluting
streams, pouring their silver selves like nectar
over rock and satined stone, threading their ways
like songs – laughing, dancing foamily in gentle joy
as they spill together towards the blue, blue jewel of
the sea, that lies so still beyond – beyond …
its mightiness as radiant and magnificent as a dewdrop
— This is Beloved Exmoor.
Judith K Gillis – completed 1991