The world is full of nursery rhymes.

The world is full of nursery rhymes. On the way back from London I drove past Banbury Cross, near Gloucester ( though it was not raining so no fear of large puddles), past a very crooked house where a crooked cat may have lived and there were most certainly mice, and last night, had I been wearing a hat, there were bats enough to fill it.

Last year I drove past here and the window was full of cats.( scroll down the page to find the pictures from Hay, around 25th May) The flower border shows how the house was once much loved.

 

Yesterday was a settling back into work day, a walking in sunshine day, a finding words that had been forgotten and remembering day, a painting day. On the way home from collecting Tom from rowing there were owls. The first slow flapped in a hush winged ghost flight across wind bent hedges. The second sat beside the road, owl eyed, bright white in a crown of black branched trees that had grown through the ruin of an old house. Curious, he watched us until the hunt called to his blood and he spread wings wide and sailed away.

Now the day begins in a misty moisty morning and the damp air is full of the whirl of grasshopper warblers, chiffchaff and blackbirds ( perhaps four and twenty, but not baked in a pie), and today is a painting lion and unicorn day.

 

On the beach today:
More of the tattered feathers of Icarus
A few pale tears from a mermaid's eye
Sea the colour of a herring gull's wings
Shifting drawings in the sand made by the sea's restless hand
Oystercatchers like dancers
Seaweed coloured like flames
A  child's glove
A close mist that stole the edge of the world. 

One, two, three, four, five

Once I caught a fish alive.

Sis, seven, eight, nine, ten

Then I let him go again.