Landscapes for Life with Samuel T Coleridge and Ted the Border Collie

The defining feature of my life for the last 30 years has been the amount of caring involved: for disabled children who, although now adults, still need daily input, a daughter and ex-husband with Type I diabetes, and these days for very elderly parents too. 

Going on forays into the country for a few hours lifts me above the frustrations involved in having to set aside my own interests, and replenishes my not-always-very-deep reserves of patience.

When I go out on a jaunt, more often than not I find myself in either an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or a National Park. We are spoilt for them here in the south-west. 

Which is as well, because as far as my mental health is concerned, these places are life-savers. 

So I am always thrilled and delighted when one of my poems pops up in connection with the bodies overseeing these special places on our behalf. 

My poem Coleridge Changes his Library Books, which is from my first collection, Communion, is currently gracing the AONB's Landscapes for Life blog. This is particularly apt as many of the places it mentions are under their guardianship. It can be read it here. 

Meanwhile, today's caring duties will take me to one such area, the Mendip Hills. I think I'll take the dog along and make an afternoon of it. 

Tintern Sojourn

It would be enough to spend the day facilitating poetry in an ancient, sprawling house just outside Monmouth. Great to read your own poems and sell a few books too.  

But this morning the universe laid on frost, daybreak, ruins, a river, crows and jackdaws too. 

I stopped off at Tintern Abbey six weeks ago on my way up to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see 'The Witch of Edmonton', when Autumn was swinging through the trees like an orangutan.  Now it's winter with big frost-furry knobs on.  

A short distance upstream, in the car park of the Moon and Sixpence, mist lifted off the surface of the Wye. 

So six weeks, not five years.  And kind of just less than half a mile above Tintern Abbey, rather than a few.  Even so 

... with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.