Trencrom Hill

You couldn't make it to Trencrom Hill in spring.

Instead you set your easel by the Old Carn                                                            

and caught the sliver of darkening sea by its  

western slope, the orange that held shadow

circles in its enveloping petals and the soft

azure blue of a hypnotic and permanent sky.

That winter you were near its base again,

seeing the hill as a misted grey, five layers

of background deep, with indistinct outline.

Your focus was the golden glint on bare willow,

framing the rectangular bottom edge, leading

the eye perfectly to the backward-leaning

green-brown lines of the field. Cornish hedges

appeared as thin black lines separating four

meadows of four greens, the granite farm

hiding by a stark winter copse. Captured on

canvass now, this landscape view across     

Trevethoe Barton to Trencrom's misty heights.

On the next day of bright winter, you were

persuaded to climb with me. I led you through

the bracken to the holy well, secure, inspiring

and then upward to the stone-pillared gateway.

On smooth rounded boulders, we sat to watch

the birth of clouds and felt the energy flow from

St Michael's Mount, through Trencrom and out

towards Ireland. This was not a place to paint.

It was a place to breathe. A good place to breathe.

You asked me to write the day onto a page. I agreed 

– but only after the day's scents had started to drift,

only after time had finally abandoned us and the long          

winter sunset slowly darkened into familiar night.