Tuesday, for my permitted exercise,
I walked on reclaimed land above the bay:
a quarry once, then land-fill site, today
the coastal landscape has a different guise.
On hilly, weeded tracks, dog-walkers meet
lone runners, lonely trudgers, retirees,
photographers, birdwatchers, families:
a hearty regiment with marching feet
that, by their constant use, collectively,
have tramped broad paths for everyone to share
and up I went on Tuesday for fresh air,
a lock-down-liberated escapee,
to walk familiar trails and view the bay
with low-tide boats lop-sided all along
and Brent geese congregated, forty-strong,
Herm island, isolated, far away,
itself in lock-down as the islands are,
obedient to authority’s dictates
to keep coronavirus from our gates:
strange times are these that verge upon bizarre.
I came upon fresh tracks in that landscape,
departures from old, bland, accustomed routes
as though from a dead tree had sprung green shoots:
new trails, signs of avoidance, of escape.
On impulse, I turned left instead of right,
right was the path I never failed to take,
and found myself attentively awake,
newly alert, my body more upright.
The view was subtly different because
that small shift of direction made it so.
I stood and watched the tide return from low
up through the bay at Bordeaux as it does
and wondered, on this reconfigured mound,
if we’d resume our former lives unchanged
or choose, instead, a future rearranged
and stride ahead on fresh trails newly found.
Richard Fleming
