Bluebells

Well I didn't got for a long walk in the countryside today. Instead, I headed for Ecclesall Woods - just a mile from this keyboard. On Wednesday afternoon - as I was waiting in the local school's playground to pick up Phoebe, a woman told me she had been to the woods that morning and the bluebells were reaching their peak - a little earlier in the year than usual.

And that is why I headed back to the woods as I have done most years just to see the English bluebells - violet blue hazes beneath the trees.  They do not last for long. I have often tried to photograph them but I never seem to capture a definitive bluebell image that wholly satisfies me. The shots that accompany this blogpost are the best of today's crop.

Nine years years ago I wrote a poem called "In Bluebell Time". One or two long-time visitors may remember that I posted it before but most of the people who come to "Yorkshire Pudding" today will never have seen it so I am taking the liberty of posting it again:-

In Bluebell Time

They came back.
A haze of indigo, purple and violet blue
Swirling across that secret glade
Like morning mist
Drifting the mottled shadows
Under gnarled and timeless trees
Where invisible thrushes carolled
In the heart of those fairy woods.
And it was lovely and it was blue.
Tumbling down to the brook
And all along the margins of the path.
I bent and held a single stem against my palm
Silently pledged no hurt nor harm
To see them dangling like drops of rain
To see the blueness once again.
Yet they made no ringing or jingling sound
As they reclaimed their ancient ground.
What joy and truth was thereby found
To see the bluebells all around.

And a few years before that I wrote a different poem in which bluebells feature. A poem that harks back to World War I:- 

1916

I left you in the bluebell time
Afore that summer's foliage
Carpeted those paths we walked
In shadow.
I clasped you by a gnarled beech tree
And felt your urgent heart
Against my chest -
And the lovely bluebells
Hung like mist
And life seemed like a story
Of hope and yes, of love...
But I left you in the bluebell time
For Cannock Chase
And khaki games of war
No bluebell kisses
And no words to say
Those awful things we saw.

Reading those poems again, it's kind of weird. Like reading a stranger's poetry but I swear that it was me. I have always had a "thing" for bluebells - more than any other flower I know.