CORNISH CREAM

I'm an admirer of the work of Cornwall's greatest poet, the late Charles Causley, and have recently finished reading an excellent biography about him by Laurence Green.
When Jane and I spent several weeks in Cornwall last year, we visited the town of Launceston, where Causley was born, and the cemetery where he is buried.
I wrote this poem, Blackberries, having just returned one morning from walking a friend's dog on the coastal path above Port Isaac.

 












BLACKBERRIES                                        

Carrying home, in cupped hands,
a clutch of blackberries, freshly picked,
I marvel at the morning light,
high-circling gulls,
the puzzled stares of cattle at a gate.
Beneath a Causley-Cornish sky
I struggle to complete this poem
and wonder would that placid man
(schoolmaster, poet, balladeer)
have made allowances, ignored
blackberry stains like ink-blots on
my hapless, hopeless, homework page
and, with a not unkindly look,
have handed back my jotting book?