On this beautiful spring day in February
with delphinium-blue skies and cheeky
crocuses splashing purple and dazzling
daffs nodding agreement in this mild April
zephyr of a breeze – then do fongen folk  to go on pilgrimage
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands.,

Our pilgrimages tend towards interiority
& still seek relics of a past that cannot last.
I imagine that if a poet who I have in mind
were given one more day on this mortal sod
this would be the kind of mild, English day
that Chris would choose. The attempt to resurrect
the past always leads to a dereliction of 
the present & of the future. That quantum moment
of flux and uncertainty lies within the hollowed
out bridge in time that links the fleeting past and uncertain future..

Just so many days like this we are allotted,
maybe a baker’s dozen over a life-time.
to truly notice such things as the flowers and trees and the Turner-skies
of this benign and blessed old country of ours.
& so we lose ourselves, as Chaucer did so-long ago,
watching his pilgrims wend their weary ways to Canterbury.,