Peter Lilly: Poems

I find myself where the wind in the leaves is heard but traffic is not, where hills without houses roll to the horizon, where the creaky chair and  desk of tired varnish furnish the coming days with ideal, and I must write. The air is fresh and the sun blistering, et je vais parler français  avec les amis, en buvant le vin de la région,  et la sensation de la conversation dans une belle langue  ajoute une émotion pure, when I come to write verse in my native tongue. And the boisterous laughter of children, and the giggling of an infant energise this siesta atmosphere to fill the time with melody, and the fill the melody with words, and to fill the words with meaning, to fill the coming months avec le repos de maintenant. Written in July 2017 while Silje and I were on retreat with some friends in a tiny village in the south of 'Le Parc National des Cévennes.'  As I learn to speak more French I have ex...

I have missed the sun: softening the pavements with blissful warmth; enticing petals to open and expose their reproduction in splayed peacock beauty; immediately splicing reels of nostalgic summers, ice cold beers and fascinating fires, projecting them red  through closed eyelids; pulsing a single tear, the best kind of tear, from the well of appreciation to tenderly evaporate from skin cheeks; Causing what was dull to glisten and deepening every colour with respiration and the smell of photosynthesis; re-igniting the love of water that shocks the throat with cold, suspending the need to breathe so one may fully appreciate all that is reflected and absorbed; somehow diminishing stresses and concerns in the truth of essential relaxation. Yes, I have missed the sun. (inspired by Vitamin D) Written on that first really sunny day in April 2011.