Thinking on it now, it was like living at sea
beneath the whaleback hills, in those blue
acres of lavender. Our house was a barge,
its chimneys sharing our dreams with the sky.
The barns were islands we would swim to
through the fields, beyond the shoreline
of the lane. Here, we would laze and snooze,
sheltering from the unflinching gaze of the
noonday sun. Marooned on our beds of hay,
we would plot our escape – how one day
we might slip away to Vernon, board the train
to Paris and live as bohemians on the banks
of the Seine, selling our paintings of the north,
telling tales of the blue seas of Normandy.
