Peter Lilly: Poems

Gentle chill mingles with February sun to warm my bones, and prick my skin with cold.  Lake calm sleep breath waves expose the broken shells that make up the earth,  and keep the land believing in winter.  When I lived in the U.K. the first sunny day of spring would burn itself onto my memory with relief from the cold, joy in the warmth, and anticipation for the summer to come. Most years I would write a poem on that day about my excitement (such as ' I have missed the sun ' written in April 2011).  Now I live in Montpellier in the south of France, that feeling comes a little earlier in the year. This year it was towards the end of February, when we were at the beach near Sète for the day. It was warm but the (relative) cold of winter was still clinging to the air. The feeling given by the weather matched  the relief and thankfulness we feel at finally moving into our flat here in Montpellier. 

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.