Peppercombe - A Pastoral Paradise

Memories are soft here -

Flowing through time as though a conch resting on a bygone ear.

Peppercombe perfumed with wild garlic cloves

Near Clovelly,

Stands encrusted by the snow of a salty sea

And pirouetting pollen

That dances in a realm of emerald enchantment.

A wistful melody rings

Through Spring's

Bronzed mosaic;

An archaic

Composition of ephemeral wanderers -

Captured in those whispers 

Now coveted in pebbled crevices 

At Peppercombe Beach;

A paradise at arms reach!

Ours to beseech

For a brilliant moment in soft time.

Paws pave the way to a 'place beyond the pines' -

Reflected in the golden hues of pints

Sipped on a sun-kissed day

In Clovelly's cobbled bay.

The nebulous heat in Devon's scone-baked arbour,

Warms the souls of those resting in its harbour.

Vicious values running in the veins of a city's sphere,

Cooled in the clear

Soft air -

breathing sweetly here, not there!

The carnival colours of Westwood Ho!

Are aglow

With the smiles of ice-cream consuming youth

And smuggled souls drunk on vermouth.

On the rugged coast of Appledoor,

Heathcliff and Rochester arrive from a literary moor -

With pebble-dashed brutality,

Leaving souls lost at sea,

To meet crafted corpses 

Over book-infused tea 

At Johns.

Gloomily, Dante Gabriel Rossetti nodded

As weed-entwined paws trodded

Towards the red-coated cliffs

Described within Daphne du Maurier's ominous myths. 

Thus, within the book shop lay

Devon's dreamy and dazed prey -

A stolen daughter 

From Wiltshire's wistful water.

Farewell to the whipping sun's glare -

And welcome to a land of parchment perfumed air.

Indelible ink

Brings her to the literary brink

Of timeless love,

For all else above

Is an intelligent and poetic crush;

A rush

Of south-western waves

Which engrave

"In Memoriam".

Tragically transient in time,

But a story so simply sublime.

Peppercombe is a subtly spiced pla(i)ce (with a 'sole'),

A space

For a little family

To breathe and be.

We might say that we have been book-bound

To a simpler way of life, once lost and now found.