Down the Rabbit-Hole (Eek!)

For the moment, I am beneath ground, exploring the tunnels of a literary labyrinth. I probably won't surface until the end of April/beginning of May.

Helen Thomas's Spring

from Under Storm's Wing.

Edward was busy in the room that was to be his study, and Merfyn was asleep in the new bare room upstairs, while I washed up the supper things and arranged the cups and plates on the dresser. The kitchen led out directly into the garden, and when I had done my work I stood in the doorway emptying my heart of disappointment and sadness. The dusk was falling, and the dew-wet earth and all the newly born green of spring filled the air with scent, and as I leaned against the door I took in a deep breath. The sweet freshness of it filled me with joy, and again and again I breathed deeply to experience an elation, as from a magic draught, that I had never felt before. I stooped down and took up a handful of earth and crumbling it let it fall through my fingers. Its harsh touch and its pungent clean smell thrilled me with a new awareness. My eyes were opened to the beauty of the night, to the dark ridge of the downs against the cloudless blue sky, where now stars appeared like pebbles dropped from above. Away to the east was a radiance where soon the moon would rise, and a soft wind as of ushering voices stirred on the hill side. A white owl flew past me silently like a ghost, and like the cry of a ghost sounded its quavering note from the elm tree at the end of the garden. The cherry trees thick with pendulous buds breathed - as it were - softly in sleep. The slender moon rising timidly above the trees laid her spell on the earth, and all was silence and darkness and sleep. On me too she laid her spell. I turned to go to Edward, and met him coming towards me.

'There's a new moon,' he said; 'you must wish.'

'There's nothing left to wish for' I said; 'we are in the country and it is spring.'

Notes from a Fantasy

he house faces west, looking over mountains and the sea. He comes to me in the evening and we sit in the garden, eating apples and watching the sun set.

The house changes shape and its windows move.

There is always a bath in the garden. The water is heated from beneath. I lie there for hours, reading and watching the sea.

Three houses in all: mine, theirs and the empty one.

A jetty. The shlop-shlop of water on wooden posts and the underside of the boards. The hollow sound of a dog's claws on wood.

Oyster mushrooms found in the woods. I leave a note: 'Enjoy. S x'

The carn. A candle and a lighter left at the door. Scramble inside and sit in the darkness and mud. Wait for your eyes to adjust. Try not to think about the weight of earth above you.

I play him the music I love and we listen together in silence. I sit on the arm of the sofa. The room darkens.

Card Game

With thanks to the very gorgeous: http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/.

And thanks too to the even more gorgeous Rebecca for sending me the link. What larks, Pip!

A Wedding Shanty (for Jo and Mash)

I cannot write your love.
I have an inland hand
and insufficient ink to fill the sea of it.
But I can look into the waves
and see if I can find you,
beneath the water or above,
swimming, fishing,
or sitting on the beach,
drifting on the quiet comfort
of your togetherness.

The sea is yours. It reflects you,
first alone, now together.
Your movements are mirrored in the tides.

Even at home you can hear it:
it flows nightly through the hall,
along the skirting board,
as far as the kitchen,
and out, waterfalling down the steps.
It laps at the foot of your bed
and soaks the sheets.
It sloshes in your wine glasses,
your record sleeves.
Even Gloria must lift her paws to let it pass.

You've always heard it:
its beat and retreat,
its echo in your dreams,
as if you both knew it was waiting
to roll and tangle you in love,
to press two holey stones upon your fingers.
It remembers you, and sings to you
two halves of a sea song that are now as one.

And so, for what my earth-bound hand,
my land-lover's words are worth,
this is my shanty to you both.
Yours is the sea. You have its blessing.
May you always go to it together.



***My brother, Mash, married Jo last weekend at Huntsham Court in Devon. It was a great wedding and a fun weekend, and I read this piece during the service.

Jo and Mash live on the Sussex coast and share a great love of the sea. When we were children, one of Mash's greatest pleasures was to be taken down to Seaford on a windy day to watch the waves.

Gloria is a very black cat who lives with Jo and Mash.

A Totem Animal Speaks II

got to know Jenny Walters and Rebecca Hurst a few years ago when we decided to form a small writing group, meeting in one of our local pubs every few weeks. They have become two of my dearest friends. Together, we share ideas, images (I have stolen snails shells from Rebecca, sea spray from Jenny) books and dreams. The evenings we spend together feel somehow alchemical, as though there is something essentially, magically potent about our meetings; and whether we are whooping with laughter or sobbing and throwing our sceptres at the injurious gods, they are always powerful and precious occasions.

A few months ago, zig-zagging our way home from Jenny's house, Rebecca and I rescued a hedgehog from the side of the road. It inspired me to write a short prose poem.

Last week, Rebecca wrote a rookish response.

And now Jenny has replied with her own animal:

Jenny Wren

(for Sian and Rebecca)

I am russet brown on top and pale below. I am soft and round with long thin legs.

In the daytime I am alone but I am busy, busy, busy. I fly here and there and perch and peck and twist. Watching through my eyes both dark and light.

You glimpse me in the hedges. I will only give a little.

I am strong and brave, bold and clever.

But I am tiny.

Underneath my feathers I am brittle. You could break me with your hand if you wanted. But I can fill my lungs and stretch apart my mouth and shout until I am heard.

I have an incredibly loud voice for such a small bird.

At night, in the house that my husband has built and I have feather lined where I have laid my eggs, I will close my eyes and be calmed by familiar wings.

You can read Rebecca's introduction to our Jenny here.

Finally, the decorated initial seems completely wrong for a post on the warmth of friendship. However, it's what happened when I started drawing the I; so I've decided to use it. Perhaps it means I need to meet up with J and R again soon and defrost in their company.

Passing the Same Trees

from, John Berger, The Shape of a Pocket.

One July evening this summer, I went up the highest field, high above the farm, to fetch Louis's cows. During the haymaking season I often do this. By the time the last trailer has been unloaded in the barn, it's getting late and Louis has to deliver the evening milk by a certain hour, and anyway we are tired, so, while he prepares the milking machine, I go to bring in the herd. I climbed the track that follows the stream that never dries up. The path was shady and the air was still hot, but not heavy. There were no horseflies as there had been the previous evening. The path runs like a tunnel under the branches of the trees, and in parts it was muddy. In the mud I left my footprints among the countless footprints of cows.

To the right the ground drops very steeply to the stream. Beech trees and mountain ash prevent it being dangerous; they would stop a beast if it fell there. On the left grow bushes and the odd elder tree. I was walking slowly, so I saw a tuft of reddish cow hair caught on the twigs of one of the bushes.

Before I could see them, I began to call. Like this, they might already be at the corner of the field to join me when I appeared. Everyone has their own way of speaking with cows. Louis talks to them as if they were the children he never had: sweetly or furiously, murmuring or swearing. I don't know how I talk to them, but, by now, they know. They recognise the voice without seeing me.

When I arrived they were waiting. I undid the electric wire and cried: Venez, mes belles, venez. Cows are compliant, yet they refuse to be hurried. Cows live slowly - five days to our one. When we beat them, it's invariably out of impatience. Our own. Beaten, they look up with that long-suffering, which is a form (yes, they know it!) of impertinence because it suggests, not five days, but five aeons.

They ambled out of the field and took the path down. Every evening Delphine leads, and every evening Hirondelle is the last. Most of the others join the file in the same order, too. The regularity of this somehow suits their patience.

I push against the lame one's rump to get her moving, and I felt her massive warmth, as I did every evening, coming up to my shoulder under my singlet. Allez, I told her, allez, Tulipe, keeping my hand on her haunch, which jutted out like the corner of a table.

In the mud their steps made almost no noise. Cows are very delicate on their feet: they place them like models turning on high-heeled shoes at the end of their to-and-fro. I've even had the idea of training a cow to walk on a tightrope. Across the stream, for instance!

The running sound of the stream was always part of our evening descent, and when it faded the cows heard the toothless spit of the water pouring into the trough by the stable where they would quench their thirst. A cow can drink about thirty litres in two minutes.

Meanwhile, that evening we were making our slow way down. We were passing the same trees. Each tree nudged the path in its own way. Charlotte stopped where there was a patch of green grass. I tapped her. She went on. It happened every evening. Across the valley I could see the already mown fields.

Hirondelle was letting her head dip with each step, as a duck does. I rested my arm on her neck, and suddenly I saw the evening as from a thousand years away:

Louis's herd walking fastidiously down the path, the stream babbling beside us, the heat subsiding, the trees nudging us, the flies around their eyes, the valley and the pine trees on the far crest, the smell of piss as Delphine pissed, the buzzard hovering over the field called La Plaine Fin, the water pouring into the trough, me, the mud in the tunnel of tress, the immeasurable age of the mountain, suddenly everything there was indivisible, was one. Later each part would fall to pieces at its own rate. Now they were all compacted together. As compact as an acrobat on a tightrope.