A Mystery Tour

The Spring haiku blog has arrived (see link at left). Can summer be far behind? Coach drivers are cleaning their mirrors and checking their first-aid kits, making ready their vehicles for those day trips to popular Welsh resorts like Tenby and Aberystwyth; and of course ever popular, particularly with senior citizens, is the mystery tour. Passengers compete to be the first to guess the destination. There's often a light-hearted communal flutter - guessing the round-trip mileage. And of course, on the return journey in the dark, lusty song and conversation fades away to be replaced by gentle snoring.

A Mystery Tour

The old souls tripping over the edge
of Wales and over Offa*
and into God's green countryside
on the black ribboned roads
curling through the gentle
rolling hills and dark deciduous dales
and along the winding lanes
hedged-in between the dripping trees
and the steaming fields of new-mown grass
and waving barleycorn
high above the muddy estuaries
filled with stock-still cormorants
stationed like black crosses
drying out on seaweed coated rocks
where the sun has now edged out
will doubtless want to sing
a merry song or two
and pass around the celebratory cap
for the loose-change collection
on the long way back,-
We'll meet again...
Show me the way to go home...
'Jolly good driver, Uncle Jack'
'Every grandma's favourite son'
'Plays the spoons. Plays the lottery'
'Knows all the pubs for miles around'
'And all the tea-shop toilet stops along the way'
'And all the 24 hour garages'
'And all the cop shops'
...along the long way back
from The Land of Song
to the sleepy land of Somnus.

c)- Gwilym Williams

*Offa's Dyke is an earthern rampart which runs along an ancient border of Wales with England. It is named for it's builder, King Offa.