Sundays

As a child I hated Sundays. To me they represented lost days, mired in lethargy and boredom. Days spoiled by the tensions of enforced silence and barely concealed anger that rattled around in our house. Getting out of the house and away across the fields and riverbank was my escape.  
There were exceptions to the Sunday rule – in particular the summer picnics in the Quantocks and on Berrow sands and trips further afield in the old Hillman Minx, which was prone to overheating especially in holiday traffic.

This  disaffection with Sunday has persisted with me. I am rarely comfortable in its surroundings although I am getting better and Sundays are improving especially now that I no longer go out to work on Monday!

Easter Sunday was perfect – cloudless blue sky and sun on my back – a day spent working in the garden, then rounded off  by sitting back with a beer appreciating all the hard work and the way the garden has sprung into life with the coming of the sun (rather later here in the North I’m afraid).

Good Sundays stand in such stark contrast with those bad remembered days that  I find they sometimes inspire me to write. Here are two of my Sundays, with many more rolled in –

Sunday

The kind of light, crisp
white, perfect summer’s day
in spring

A saucer of blossom
cups the shoulder of my coat
casting

back when we walked
in the Kentish orchards of youth
not sown.

Sky blue on the rocks
together, unspoken, still
grown

Drinking love’s fruit cup  
under pale sunlight’s
stem

Days beyond improving
a love not inclined to
telling-

-then, when we were moved
by the same beauties
as now

by the same silent falling
of blossom on a coat
in sun.

Sundays

High stools and low ceilings

banish a century of Sunday blues

Moss walled cocoons

crowding alleys cobble 

of patent pavements,

red wine, undress, recall

unknown memories

shared, didn’t everyone

watch Morse? Did you

without falling asleep

would we watch together

is that what this is,

is that what

Sundays are for ?