Songs Of Summer. Poem by Ellen Devilliers

Summer evenings on a crowded beach, with youngsters playing,
Carefree abandon, joyous adolescence, salad days of insouciance,
A young man with a guitar sang them their philosophy,
Your eyes, full of tenderness and desire,
Found mine and did not look away.
I came nearer, and later, sang for you, with you,
Our voices matched in timbre, yours tenor, mine alto,
No matter what we sang, our vision was the same,
Freedom, a new world, a world to last forever,
The backdropp to a love of summer days.

And so began our long ‘histoire d’amour’, my love,
Leaving the crowds behind, we preferred our solitude,
You the leader, me the schoolgirl, together we grew
And shaped the world that we wanted to be ours
In harmony, in complicity, in love. In love.

Of late, we met on fields of summer grass
And sang our harmonies, of love and loss
The voices falter, reach but do not waver,
Enriched by life’s encounters, pleasure, pain
Are now our legacy of youth’s desires.
Our children listen, wondering at the passion
Of two apparent strangers, living separate lives,
Who steal the moments offered by contrivance,
To put the words to music’s soulful score
And sing their songs to those who search for love.

And those who search beyond the flesh and soul
After that one love for which their spirits thirst
Will recognise our song across the miles and years and claim it as their own
Adding their sweet harmonies to our precious melody.
Composers without copyright,
We give joyfully to those who would listen
The music of our love, our being, our oneness:
For it is the sound of the life we make to each other.