|
The former chair of the Liddington Parish Council, David Lomax spent over 15 years on the Parish Council. It’s important to celebrate those who serve in our village – parish council, church committee, village hall. We depend on our volunteers. David has made his mark in several places around the village. The Phone Box for example. He and Geoff Hale in their dark and grey work suits would often be seen converting the old box to a place for a defibrillator and decorating it. He also brought us the Elephant. I loved the elephant. Unfortunately, when Joel and Vanetta Joffe left, the elephant went to a new home. The poem is called “The Footpath by the Jubilee Gardens.” David was the master designer and creator of that path. Maurice Spillane |
A path is never a straight line. It is living art,
as a sculptor might see it, buried like a shadow
in a boulder or a trunk of wood. His aim
is to chip here and there to release the image
into the quietness, where the pace is slower,
each step a tai ’chi move in a slow, slow lane.
Today, the oyster-shell edging by the spinney
is safe and unsafe, a confusion of crab apples
like billiard balls under your shoe, a rabbit hole
and one overhead branch to challenge you,
thorns like snakes from the field to deter you.
This is a path for a slow lingering stroll.
The old iron fencing is warped by curious cattle,
wet noses agog who leaned in from Mike’s Field,
but there is purchase to stare, and stare again,
view the scarp by St. Andrew’s spire and tower,
the grass and crops like waves across the drift,
the family of roe watching you watching them,
and sweep your eyes to where the kite
and the buzzard reenact an aerial battle.
The world is spinning around this refuge,
passing time, time passing,
the pretence that we’re in slow motion
while everything is in a flux of change.
I’ve never passed another on this path.
Maybe it needs a signpost, a testament
to village service while he’s still about,
something simple, like “David’s Path.”
