The only child slowly walks pathways

once stepped upon by Anne Boleyn.

The gravel barely rustles or crackles

beneath his young plimsolled feet.

(Close where the rouge and blanc roses

were co-planted thus to meet.)

Reflecting (As maybe she herself so did)

how sweet the scent of the Purple

pathway-lining Lavendula freeze.

Alone, apart from her shadow presence,

he is unsuspecting the unsettling effect

of a sudden temperate Summer breeze

weaving, and waving the peach-like fuzz

of his virginal pink boyhood cheeks,

it somehow now evokes new and vital senses:

Sending tingles and ripples from head to toe,

a rising to the sensitive vellus hairs

upon the back of his lightly suntanned neck.

Was that a spectral woman over there

passing through the corner break

of the bounding, surrounding, greenwood hedge?

Was that an Admiral Red flouncing, and announcing

joyous life through this Indian Summer’s

warmly unaccustomed perfumed air?

For once he did not feel alone -

in this the old orchard garden

of his choral boarding school.

Here he could escape the loneliness,

the onlyness, of his isolated being:

Surrounded solely by the friendly Spirits,

who listened to his Sunday soprano renderings,

whilst ruffled, cassocked, scrubbed,

angelic faced, and much practised, he

a Soloist, only.

© Allen Ansell 2025