The white-capped hills
around me,
silver in the sun,
were exotic.
Romantic even, to my eye.
I heard the woolly sheep
in the green fields
become silent
when they stopped grazing
and lifted their faces
and watched me walking by.
My feet drummed a rhythm
down the narrow lane between them.
I marched on
under the low light-blue sky
and my phone logged the data.
Air flowed cold into my lungs
but came out warmer.
Breathing, maskless,
a different rhythm than my feet.
The cycles clarifying and replete.
It made me both remember
stuff
and forget.
Like some dance to remember
and some dance to forget.
Then slate grey clouds
suddenly appeared;
inclement weather
was on its way,
as usual,
and the sun
would soon disappear.
My phone said I’d already done 7k
so there was no chance
to make it back in time,
I knew I’d get cold
again that day.
And so I did as the sheep did
and I stopped and looked about,
silently lifted my face,
and remembered
to cherish the light
before it went away.
I felt, really felt, that briefest warm blanket.
A warmth the colour of the clementine
that I remembered, then,
I had still in my pocket.
Or, I forget,
was it a tangerine
or orange or mandarine?
Whatever it was, it was and is, perfection.
The perfect winter snack wrapped safely
in its environmentally
friendly protection.
And standing there beneath the hills
of fluffy white
where there was no need to worry
about social distancing
or sanitising
or remembering,
I peeled that clementine and danced each piece
slowly through my lips and bit it.
Each wedge of juice flooded my tongue
with sunshine wine,
a nature burst so divine
that for that sublime
moment in time
I forgot the chaos of this world.
The greyness of this world.
Of my world.
And everything felt just fine.
