There was a comfortable silence to be found, walking into the mystery. My quiet while the scenery talked. The thrum of crickets and the burst of blackberry on my cheek on passing too close. The glugging motor of a lazy bony man with a hat over his eyes. An old hand at driving he can do so in his sleep. The rush of the trees, hardly a wind but enough to set the old oaks off. Everything talking in its own strange language which is a wonder to hear yet only half understood.
A city of mechanised whyrr in the week - still seen on the ridges, hemming this canal path in; it is good to have the lapping of slow water on its end. There is a good mile of nobody, the algae here grown brave and amassing in the lock. The moorhens and coots (I forget which - some are red heads and the others, white skullbeaks) are diving beneath the leafy crust and breaking up; chattering and honking.
And back into the talking world. The low whispers on a grassy hillbank with the big new Stratford stadium behind. Talk of work and light laughter. While from a boat, "the village butty" the slow drone of an oboe and bouncing hand drum. Everyone masked behind sunglasses and in the guise of the old bone driver, the brim of my straw hat covering my eyes while I write these long words and the big burning question all ways, why do I not do this more often?
A woman in a flowery dress with bolt blue eyes offers me a massage, but my back is so sweaty I have to decline - for my own pride as well as her wellbeing. I watch her place a small balded man in her chair and begin on his back, rolling her small lithe hands against his skin; he has his eyes closed and looks in rapture. Ah, no regrets. I have a cool pint of ale served by a man dressed as a bee with a funny black hat. I find the book, slow progress through the icy landscape poems of Transtromer. I sleep.
