Allow this soothing spring poem to calm your mind
Journalist and Author Alan Franks shares his beautiful poem about the spring landscape he admires, resonating with this years Mental Health Awareness Week theme to connect with nature.
I’m a compulsive walker and always have been. This picture was taken during one of the British Pilgrimage Trust’s inaugural walks on the Surrey / Sussex border. The business of putting one foot in front of another in open countryside is crucial to my sense of physical and mental wellbeing. Like countless others in the past year, I’ve had to forego this elemental privilege, and can’t wait for its return. This poem was brought about by my regular thinking, during lockdown, of the extraordinary view from St. Martha’s Hill on the North Downs Way. It is thought to have been the model for John Bunyan’s hill named Difficulty in The Pilgrim’s Progress. I last visited it, with my wife Ruth, during the brief gap in last year’s prohibitions.
Spring 2021
Up it comes again, the spring breeze sprung
From under the sky’s winter bedding, bearing something.
From this hill you can see it edging into eyeshot,
Ever the fresh traveller from round the world’s corner,
Full of tales and prophesies he passes off as new.
Still, he’s truly welcome, when you come to think
How, since he last passed through, the trees you see about you,
Ashes, elms and such, turned so calamitous
They took, bare-knuckled, to brawling the wind with one another,
Flinging it on like slingshot, aimless in the slaughter;
Showy as old catapults; casualties past counting.
Little wonder then if we revert to prayer
Or its grounded counterpart, high-hoping the air
For some evidence of repair, abatement, settlement.
The signs from here are promising: see this breeze appear
To comb the partings of the middle-distance meadows;
Gently touch the forested forelock of that ridge;
Sweep these rising grasses and do so, yes, orchestrally.
So breeze, passing over, spot this infant season
Cradled, shining dawnlike from her yawning shell.
Visit a caress, here, on her untouched forehead,
Acknowledging her promise as your own best blessing.
I hope you found this blog post helpful in some way and I’m always keen to hear your thoughts - let me know over on Twitter @RachelKellyNet
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Franks is a journalist and author. He was for thirty years a feature writer with The Times,and was twice shortlisted for a British Press Award. His novels include Boychester’s Bugle and The Notes of Dr. Newgate. A short work of fiction, Going Over was the winner of the British Novella Prize. His poems have also won several awards, including that of the Wilfred Owen Association in 2014. His most recent play was Looking at Lucian, starring Henry Goodman, at the Theatre Royal in Bath. His songs have been covered by various artistes in the fields of jazz and folk music.
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