THE BANKS OF GREEN WILLOW

When he lay down beside the riverbank he felt as if could be all the way back in Merry England from centuries ago, that romantic notion of a place which existed more in dream than reality. The sound of the smoothly flowing water through the floating weeds nearby made him feel as relaxed as the child he'd once been in summers past who knew nothing of the hardships of life and who easily marvelled at the wonders of nature.

Enjoying the warmth of the sun filterering onto his face through the rushes and sedges, that long lost sense of innocence was returning to him and he felt re-born amongst the timeless meadows and riverbanks of his region.

The city had definitely taken its toll on him and he could still feel the grime of the years wasted in the big smoke in his system. He had worked like an ant in a metropolis colony for the past twenty years and had now only returned to his home county as a consequence of losing his father a few months before.

It was around the time of the funeral that Mark suddenly felt a great desire to return to the place where he had enjoyed such an idyllic childhood and adolescence. He barely recognised anyone from his past anymore but found only too well the familiar woods, riverbanks and steep winding hills as if it were just yesterday since he left the town all those decades ago, one late summer morning in September.

Some part of him wondered what it was exactly he had gone in search of for so long without anything of substance to account for the seeking. Perhaps it was all a diversion to appreciate the value of home, the one place he had avoided returning to.

All his friends had been avid back packers in the early 00's and had believed the world was their playground. That was before terrorism and pandemics had narrowed the sense of the globe as one communal sandpit for them all.

But things had changed and now it felt as if appreciating what you had in the first place was the new zeitgeist feeling in the air.

Or maybe it was just Mark that felt like this. Perhaps it was a sign of him getting older and feeling more settled in himself.

Though he also wondered if it was another way to connect to his late father's spirit. He wanted to belong to the place that his dad had lived for the entire second half of his life and planned to find real meaning in his life from now on.

Lying by the riverbank, listening to the transient sound of slow moving water as his eyes opened just enough to let in the merest sunlight, he found tears forming in his eyes as he felt genuinely returned to a place he hadn't been for so long.

Home.