graces many a living room wall
giving suburban man a glimpse
amidst anxious or stressful hours
of a world he’s lost beyond recall
if indeed it ever existed at all
transporting him to a rural scene
a ford on the languid River Stour
where a hay wain is crossing
the waggoners having paused
to let their dray horses quench
their thirst while a piebald dog
watches from the western shore
downwards from the old cottage
outside which a woman washes
clothes in these pellucid waters.
Smoke rises from the chimney
on the red-tiled roof suggesting
a homely domestic hearth within.
Two ducks paddle unperturbedly
between the wain and a solitary man
fishing on the verdant eastern bank
his boat moored amongst the reeds.
Beyond lies an expansive meadow
where distant reapers are mowing
the grass to be borne by the wain
to some local barn, the store of hay
for the winter several months away.
Tall centuries-old poplar trees loom
over the cottage, themselves dwarfed
by cumulus clouds that fill the sky
presaging a late afternoon shower
but not quite yet at this midday hour
on this summer’s day of another age
where time is spent in honest toil
with nature harnessed and tamed
but not exploited, gently resisting
yet rewarding the efforts of those
who at the end of their humble lives
return to the soil of this pleasant land
through which flows the River Stour.