100 and 100

From the Cévennes: I have much to say, and nothing to say. It's always a rich, nourishing, stimulating and exhausting experience leading a new group through the first day or two, so I've little energy for my own creativity. But so far it seems to be working, and I'm loving the process, and loving being back in this wild and beautiful place, with a warm, creative and already-cohesive group, helped by the open kindness of the 3 or 4 'returners'.

The Waterfall Experience has tempted a couple of people in these days of sun; it's still sublimely and shrinkingly cold, though, so I've been more tempted to sit on a rock in the heat and gaze at ripples and dragonflies and intrepid bathers.

With my own creative expression still hiding out in the hills somewhere, I give you from Miriam in England and Bea in les Cévennes (writing outside the same café as I was the other day) two more lyrical lots of 100 words.


100 from home: 24.8.14

They’re here, like a squall in the green-gold evening though the wind tiptoes.
 
A niece, calm and beautiful, her graceful moves belying irritation – her husband a driving hailstorm of assertion; their one-year-old toddling, reaching bare-foot for the world beyond our windows. They leave after a disturbed night. Now, the wind holds its breath, as if sensing the caul of exhaustion in late-summer cool, light still gold.
 
Seventy-one years ago today my parents married. Too late for this third generation, their shadows weave contented abandonment through the trees containing our haven. This year, autumn’s early.

Miriam Hancock


French Hug

Place de l’Eglise –
in one corner

“attention chute de neige du toit!” –

watching the first leaves
fluttering from the planes

boules waiting dents
into gritty sand –

street lanterns gracefully
draped with geraniums –

toddlers brabbling
to their mums –              

“quoi?” –

the spot
where I am thinking of you  –

“t’as bien dormi?” –
today –

three years ago
you said good-bye to this world –

“vous avez fini maintenant?” –

the metallic twelve o’clock
chimes from the nearby clocher –

rhythmically accompanied
by the panting
of the lovely black lab-spaniel
under the next table

echo the sound
of leaving footsteps –

I can see the seam of your skirt...     


Beatrice Grundbacher