The bird sitting proud on its perch looked down loftily, maybe wondering at the peculiarity of human beings.
I leant on my stick and breathed in sea air. Gulped greedily as if I was drowning, starved of oxygen.
And maybe I was. Drowning for a difference, starving for more than the life I’d been living, desperate for change.
Needing to exhale out the old and breathe deep of the new.
Too many days spent captive in the house. Bound by weakness, sickness and weariness for months on end.
I was starving for the light outside. Feeling freedom calling in my veins. My soul ached for ocean but I’d settle for sea or even a riverside view.
I wanted to wend my way to water, feel sea breeze and feel alive again. Do you ever get that feeling?
It isn’t necessary to have chronic illness to experience moments of feeling confined and constrained by circumstances.
To have a longing to break free from our normality. Live life with deeper awareness and passion.
And I’m discovering the best sort of freedom is sensed inwardly, when we know we are loved by God and can live and love freely ourselves because He lives within.
Now, a healing of sorts had enabled me to tread into new territory. A gift of grace equipping me to step outside the house at last.
So I was able to sample the delights of Blakeney Quay on my beloved’s birthday last month. I hope the photographs I took will offer a taste of the quay for you too if you also yearn for water.
‘By still waters’
If you go down to the quay today
and lift your eyes a while,
you may slowly gaze at snake of sea
threading its fine ribbon of blue
through swathes of soft shoreline
where its held fast at bay
And if you linger long enough,
you’ll hear a siren-song
of gulls wheeling their way clear of land
and sea as they lift free
with a hue and cry, barreling high
toward vast stretch of sky
But boats lie idling, still as statues
on the sand, apart from
a brave few out on far horizon
Bobbing with will of wind
Resisting lure of land and going
wherever love sends them
©JoyLenton2015
Poetry Joy 