Often of a morning

Often of a morning,
Suspended between sleep and waking,
I hold in my mind the picture
Of a day long ago in summer
Of a long hedge of thorns
(Flowering rose and blackberries)
A road to one side,
On the other, an abandoned pasture.
Deep within the hedge, hidden in shade,
There I put our house and all within it.
Then I can drop back to sleep
With the thorns there to protect it.

When hungry we have rose hips, berries
And honey - the hive's out the kitchen window.
When bored with each other,
There's television,
Our games, our internet connection.
Nothing real, though, ever gets in,
We're as we were long ago:
The children're forever young,
We're all jumbled together.
I hold to that picture
And cling firmly to slumber.

How timeless is a summer day!
That day, long ago,
I woke and looked at the sky,
How much time had passed?
A minute, an hour, a day, a month, a year?
The movement of the clouds,
The sound of the birds, the locusts,
The odd car on the not so distant road,
They changed, but they didn't progress.
You opened your eyes and stretched,
"Shit, I hope I haven't gotten burnt!"
"I wish this moment would last and last."
"The day'll be here tomorrow,
But we'll've moved on."
I felt saddened, but then we kissed.

We'd pushed our bikes along an old track
Through a break in the brambles
Into the abandoned pasture.
We had maybe 30 miles more to go
To get to our next bed and breakfast,
It was time for lunch.
We sat, a rock to our backs,
We ate our peanut butter and jelly
And shared warm wine from a water bottle,
There was such a hot fragrance to the air!
Bees busied themselves about the blooms.
Wasps navigated the shadows
We picked some blackberries
I reached for an especially good one.
"You're caught," you laughed,
"Hey! There's the original fence!"
Just visible were the cedar posts and barbed wire,
Preserved in green and shadow,
The brambles had taken over its function,
It wasn't their fault the pasture lay in ruin.
"Shit," I yelped, "I just got stung."
The defending wasp vanished amongst the branches.

Now, I know, the house is all over boxes,
Most, I think,
Though full and labeled and taped,
Are completely empty.
"Rise and shine! Come eat your breakfast!
The movers'll be here before you know it."
Three of Nature's Princes:
Restlessness, Love and Ambition,
Long ago ago broke in.
The thorns've withered and died.
Reluctantly I swing myself into motion.

By chance we drove past that pasture
Last year, when on vacation.
Now its all neatly mown lawn,
Young trees're planted here and there,
New houses've sprouted everywhere.