Departure
Upon Departing Pittville Mount Park for the Last Time
We arrived on Friday 6 October 1967.
We departed on Monday 27 January 2017
as the keys turned twice one final time.
I turned and surveyed the scene
I had gasped at fifty years earlier.
The smoothness of the engine
eased my mind.
I will away.
I drop the keys at the agents
in the very office I had trained in law
in 1982, three, four, five, six and 1987.
Pleasant days, pleasant memories.
I ponder, as the last week-end approaches
HOW STRANGE...
The ships are in mothballs
The spirit of this house has departed.
Curiously, I do not mind though.
It is a good thing!
I walk away and turn my back
on half a century.
The past belongs to the past.
The future is yet to arrive,
And there is no certainty on
future's dalliance.
She is a curious creature;
one who delights to outwit,
to trip up,
to lead down the garden path;
to seduce.
The Present is here.
She comes in many forms and phases.
But allow the Present to see your heart's desires
and Presence will somehow work with Present,
and between them
contrive a life worth living,
an ambition accomplished,
and peace restored
Darkness comes with the night
but there is joy in the morning.
Live for today!
Delight that this wonderful house and home
will in due time become an equally wonderful home
to the family about to enter.
The Piano has fallen silent
The lid unusually closed.
An act of finality in a room,
once drawing room,
then lounge,
then piano room,
Warm summer evenings
too warm down stairs,
but upstairs
the windows opened end to end
in this beautiful home,
brings a light summer evening breeze,
Cocktails,
Later Coffee and relaxation
A pleasant walk along the corridor,
admiring paintings,
the treddle sewing machine,
and ‘the picture window’
In truth the frame
for the most amazing view
of parkland, ancient trees
and larger of the two lakes.
The new family have not an incline
of the delights about to call upon them
and accompany them each day.
The first year will be three hundred and sixty five
earth shatterings
Every dawn a single event
Every colour never to be seen again.
Just a similar colour.
Wildlife
A garden burgeoning into life
Spring walks in, then awaits Summer's
early arrival on the patio
and graces her Presence in the summer house
It is time to move out and to move on
Never look back.
Never visit these lands and parks again.
They are of an earlier remembered life.
A Departing marks the fine line
drawn across the page with my fountain pen.
Come!
Let us create life anew.
Let us wander pastures new.
There is vibrancy and excitement in the air.
A Chapter has simply closed.
The New Chapter now is opened
and the contents dazzle and glisten
as if a Medieval or Anglo-Saxon Manuscript.
29 September 2021
All Rights Reserved
© 2023 Kenneth Thomas Webb
Composed January 19, 2017
