Stride over peat and puddle-shine,
While a curlew calls through cotton-grass;
Wade the nettles at the woodland edge,
While a buzzard mews above the copse.
Coffee tastes better
When it cools rapidly in an icy wind
Which blew the grains off the spoon,
Raindrops diluting it shamelessly;
Sitting on a gate or beneath a wall
To watch the deepening winter sunset,
Darkening clouds scudding across the sky
And the fairy-light houses below, in the valley.
Brush wild orchids on the soft downs,
While a lark sings high and full on the breeze;
Clink stone on stone in the mountain heights,
While wind-caught crows wheel silently below.
A sandwich tastes better
When it unfurls, slightly squashed, from the rucksack
Which sweated its way up into the heights.
The city is for lattes, where the shoppers ebb and flow;
Dining here in the lee of a rock,
Accessorized by mud and raindrops,
I feel better under the sky
When this is my elegant lunch.