Prompt: a landmark
I seldom see it now.
Just occasionally on TV
there’ll be some fleeting item
about Launceston, Tasmania,
and often enough then
that particular location.
But anyway
it wasn’t the seeing,
though that was reassuring too —
the graceful old stone,
the reds and browns and creams
and the broad tower —
so much as the hearing
every quarter hour
and on the hour
the striking of the notes
melodious and slow.
You could hear it all over town.
(I wonder if you still can
now that the town
is so expanded?)
As a child I lay in bed
the many sleepless hours
after nightmares,
and got myself cosy again
listening to those reliable chimes.
There was something mothering
about that clock.
nice. wonder if I can used to the church chimes so much that I'll miss them...
ReplyDeleteWell, I grew up with them, they were always there. And, being clock rather than church, they carried no other associations; they were for the whole town. A kind of "All's well".
ReplyDelete