As part of RURAL magazine’s remit of encouraging and promoting localism, be it in local produce or local creativity… in short, the local community spirit that sometimes seems to be slipping away from Island life, we shall be including in our regular RURAL POST mailings, poetry, inspired by the Island, from the pen of local poets.
The author of the sonnet below, Juliette Hart, writes: I was inspired to write it when standing at the very end of the breakwater at La Mare – it was being close to the approaching tide, and experiencing the physical presence of our island, which engulfed me and instilled the healing experience of our natural environment. We need this positivity more than ever, it seems.’
THE FOOTLING PATH
Why waste emotion worrying, why care
about the path extending out of sight?
Each step you take to get from here to there
will not affect new day or dark of night.
The Earth goes on regardless of its fate,
it does not fear a fall, cry tears of rain,
the course of sun and moon is never late,
tides surge, retreat, then surge, retreat again.
How swift the seasons slip away with ease,
so unaware of how the wind will blow,
as blossom fades and fruit grows ripe on trees,
the leaves give way to scatterings of snow.
How still you stand with water all around:
a way forward will, tread by tread, be found.
Juliette Hart
