A Faraway Place

‘A Faraway Place’ is a poem by my wife and I quickly penned this poetic afterthought

Princess
Only a memory; not history- just thoughts
Latticed green landscape of her endless estate
The old genes return to inspire a memory
Needlework of her boundless homeland
What mastery does this poem reveal?
Echoes of a past princess in nature’s royal estate?
For although we as mere mortals must be
Can we not imagine a finer dust that lays dormant ?
To emerge in words and song

A Faraway Place
For years I’d longed to visit
Where Winston Graham wrote
In Poldark of Cornwall:
Bodmin, St Ives and Penzance.

A tale of smugglers, tin miners, gentry,
Intrigue, romance and greed
Where raging seas sculpt craggy cliffs
And Cornish Heath abounds.

There at last; much to explore
Where other feet have trod.
I’ll do my best to recount
Of happy times spent then.

First, L....r Farm; a dairy.
Bed and breakfast offered too.
It settled in a verdant vale
Quite difficult to locate.

Through blossoming, hedged lanes we drove
At last found the estate.
That picture postcard property
Was all that we had hoped.
The hostess was a little strange
When I asked her for an iron
She brought it, but not a board.
When asked about a place to dine,
“Don’t ask me”, was her shrugged reply.

The locals about were friendly.
One stopped to show the way
To the famous bronze age ‘Hurlers’,
High up upon the moor.

There, golden, gorse girt granite stones
Placed so long before
When ancients worshiped many Gods;
A picture perfect; Bodmin Moor.

Lazy days; see mare and foal
Share grazing ground with
Ewe and lamb and tourists who
Delight in nature’s spectacle on Bodmin Moor.

Beware the marshes and the bogs,
Beware large cats that roam;
A Puma? That was hard to cop!
Sightings listed at the Minions Village Shop.
Glimpsed a skeleton on the landscape
With a Tamer Valley view.
A monument or gravestone?
To wealth or exploitation?
To Tin!!

St Ives was such a busy place
The day that we were there.
Just couldn’t find a parking spot
By harbour or by sea.

It was a public holiday and the beach was crowded.
Traffic crawled through narrow streets
Past cottages so small and quaint
Once fishermen’s accommodation.

To visit the Tate Gallery;
One reason we had come.
But time grew short while tempers frayed.
Thought we’d come back another day.

Penzance though picturesque
Did little to impress me
But the nearby Minack Theatre;
An astonishing place to be.

The stage below, the sea beyond
The cliffside terraced to seat a crowd.
I’d have loved to sit beneath the stars
That night while the actors performed.

Alas the seats were all sold out
And the rain had begun to fall.
Though disappointed I was content
To rest and enjoy the view.

Moved on from Penzance to further climes
So much more to see
But Cornwall; it will always be
A beautiful memory.