To England in a heatwave, at the beginning of the month, attending the funeral of one of my mother’s schoolfriends, who marvellously made it to the age of 102, still keeping up with the news and every event in the farming year. The poem (keep scrolling down) records that occasion: I drafted it sitting in the shade enjoying the view, having been up to the ancient earthworks with my sketchbook… It subsequently got quite a lot of editing!
This above is straight from my sketchbook: Conte pencil, coloured pencil, and graphite pencil. The colours are all light: first, it was so bright that day; also, that sketching paper doesn’t have enough “tooth” to build up a lot of pigment. So below is a computer-adjusted rendition, giving you a better idea of what I actually saw.
WHITE HORSE HILL
Written July 4th 2025
Summoned to a remembrance in The Vale, I came hours early.
Time needed to climb to the Ridgeway,
Walk to the White Horse –
Which I had last looked down on with my father,
Fifty-seven years ago, aged ten:
Could I refresh that distant picnic?
Delighted to hear yellowhammers again,
The chalkland hot-breezed me past its blue and purple wildflowers,
And pale orchids
Which I also never see on the western coast,
Until there they were:
Those stark white sculpts,
Flowing over the hillside like a fox’s flight.
And beyond this pagan mystery,
Below in the Thames plain,
The Christian octagon of Uffington church:
A stone She, queening
The meadows and browning barley,
The coverts and windbreak trees,
All that stretching hedgerow geometry…
Until furthest, by distance smoked blue,
The Cotswolds –
Which, when younger, I knew so well.
© Christopher Jessop 2025
