Grief

       Hello Darkness, my old friend, I did not hear you over the sound of our child practicing her scales on the piano. You always arrive unannounced, just when I think I am protected,cocooned. I sink beneath a chant of plainsong and feel it will protect me, or Tibetan isolation; prayer wheels spinning in my head, a rush of white noise, a roar of blood in my ears, a talisman against your clawing, gnawing, never-letting-go, thinking I will be untouchable there. But you find me and weave your fingers through the white noise closing your cold grip, insistent and serpentine.  Can I ever be free?
       I am transposed, remembering the echo of raindrops on the drum of my umbrella, the syncopated beats of blood and hymns and prayers as we gathered to say goodbye. I never heard your apology as I laid the Lily on your grave. There was no goodbye. The chaos of my mind, an apocalyptic cosmos, consumed me, a noise like animals crying and cursing in anger. I yell my silent anger and fears to your inert form, maintaining social poise lest anyone should be made embarrassed by emotion. How could you leave me alone? Everyone is polite, caring, fearful. Their kid-glove love is like feather-touch: don't rock the boat. It is insubstantial, nervous, unable to break through my protective shell and give comfort. I am left to stand in the noise of my own silence.
     Weeks have passed, months.  And I remain at your mercy. I will carry on, put on the face the world wants to see but I know I will not hear a tree fall in the silence of the forest today, or see the infinity rings spread on the water as the children skip stones across the river. I will not hear the cave mouth swallow and hold its breath as we draw near or see new life sprouting from mossy banks. I am devoid of all but you, Grief.
Please, let me find a path. Let me breathe again.

The Trader's Wife

       I had been baking the plain flat breads since dawn so when the chance came I was out of the door like a spark from the range. The versatility of the cook was being pushed for the meeting of the guild elders this evening and she was too harassed to tear herself away from the preparation of lamb with pumpkin and lentil stuffing, sugar coated biscuits and marchpane to bother with the market today so she gave her blessing for me to go in her place. I was to be trusted. My goal was a rope of whole roasted garlics and more capsicum for the trout mouse,  but I desired nothing more than freedom from the chaos of that frenetic steaming world of chopping, cubing, dicing mincing and grinding.  I was to be free, for now at least.
        As I run to the market I  taste the iron tang of the butchers work in the air along with all the fruit and spice and marsh salt on the breeze. I feel the kiss of it on my skin,  feel the honey-warm cocoon of the sun and see her tracery of light on the Estuary waters. I lean on the warmed oak posts of the covered market, my face in the shade, drinking in the strangeness of it all. I take my time finding my bearings, watching the division of players and audience, all rehearsing their parts on the stage in front of me: aproned butchers men sharpening knives, the barber surgeon equally bloodied, grain merchants checking their scales and bakers knocking excess flour from the base of their loaves while dumpling shaped matrons and gnarled old men stand waiting for their cue along side beribboned maidens with lace hankies hoping to hear their spring-mincing Beau's spout poetry and perfumed words to make their hearts and fans flutter.The cumulus of people flow around the market in a worn groove of harmonies and misunderstandings, a sea of emotion. The independent sellers, versatile in their patter, adjust their prices up and down, negotiating the play of satisfactory deals depending on their audience.
        I see her then, the trader's wife, pretty as a peach. She alone is the reason all women are referred to as the fairer sex. She is sacrificing blood oranges with a blunt knife. This is a far better end for the spoiled fruit, than having it go to the pigs. Gelatine and sugar will be added to the liquor and boiled down to make the finest delicacy, crystalised rose adding its gentle suggestion to the jelly at the last moment, food to touch the lips of gods and lovers.    
       She raises the cloudy pulp in a muslin bag allowing crystal dew drips to be released. The sun shows her silhouette to great advantage and my pulse runs in anticipation of tasting such a delicacy. The scent of the heady citrus is bringing her to the brink of intense happiness and for a moment I am lost in the dimple forming and reforming on the edge of her smile as she sucks the spilled juice from her finger. If I could make a wish I would be the orange in her hand to bring her such pleasure. I would be the oil on her skin so she would have need to kiss me away again and again. She would be my moon's compass. I could catapult to the night sky on the Cupid bow of her lips and bring her a blanket of stars. I would write her sweet poetry of flowering fruit and blue elephants under the moonlight and touch the cordial notes between us. The melted chocolate on our tongues as we kiss would be the only bitterness between us. Together we would understand all the divine secret truths of love.

Perspectives

          I spiral through the lens to a world at the other side; Alice down a rabbit hole. Do the turgid grasping roots of fungus squeeze new life from the decaying blooms when they land in the compost,I wonder, as I sink down through the humus layer in a bubble of thought? I have no time to gather my wits, let alone the items that have fallen from my fruit baskets. I pass a lowly worm who gives me a drunken stare through his monocled eye and I return a slow wink. He looks outraged at my presence but I feel I should remind him it is him burrowing in my garden, well my Uncle's garden really, not the other way round. But all of a sudden I am not so sure.
        I spiral through time and underground space assaulted as much by mushroom smells as flashes of sky as I tumble further from the garden. Surreal scenes flash past me: a mole postman on a penny farthing bicycle, belly dancing grubs, a tight-rope walker with a huge head and sequinned tights, a toy horse with a coronet of feathers cantering round and around like a motorbike on the wall of death, all defying the gravity that pulls me down and down. I was looking for answers in the compost, like reading tea leaves,  truth, a different reality, a view to the horizon and beyond, a way out from narrow perspectives, but as I spiral through this strange new world I wonder if my perspective is not shrinking further. There is no horizon here, no sky even any more. All is shades of brown and strangeness.
       The tunnel narrows and I fear I will be wedged but then realise the narrowing is due in part to a spiral of ants and beetles on the tunnel sides. My legs and arms bite into the thread of them and I spin more slowly, slowing, tighter, tight, stopping with my feet on stone steps. The insects melt away through the damp of ages, scratching through the agony of mortar. I look around at endless arches and staircases reaching and joining one another in a dance of right angles, sideways, inverted, until I spot a door. I find I am terrified. Now I have new horizons to explore, new possibilities, I am not brave enough to explore this new world now I have found it. Wishing only to find my way back to the comfort of familiar thoughts and expectations I can think of nothing but escape. I run the maze of stairs, pausing at the top of each flight, the bottom of the next, often finding they are one and the same, to consider my progress. Am I getting any closer to  my goal? It is all a cruel joke, the stairs are mirrors and perspectives and for all my efforts I am getting nowhere. Eventually I sink to the floor on a half landing exhausted, and curl like a hedgehog with my head to my knees feeling keenly  the absence of prickles to protect me. I am a jellyfish to be squashed and moulded by other forces. I drift into sleep, oblivion, relief.
        When I wake the sun has sunk lower in the sky and I can feel the fabric imprint of my skirt and the grass on my cheek. I am stiff with the exertions of my adventure (or is it the damp from the earth?) and I unclench my body from its ball, spiralling up from the ground like a new sprout released from a corm, arms outstretched. The sun glints off my Uncles binoculars where he stands on the balcony and I know I will always be observed, inspected. I clean the dirt from beneath my nails, already longing to have been braver.

Bus

      Like a spaghetti intersection, all roads lead somewhere.  All I have to do is decide which bus ticket to buy. I need to escape the high rise brick and dust of the city and go where the air is clear, leave the petulance of people's lives, their imagined importance and find the breath of mint and thyme in the air.
      I mount the bus and know I will not be able to read my book. I am on the cusp of some great moment and cannot concentrate. I avoid making eye contact with the woman opposite who bellows at the chicken in its bamboo pen ( he is destined for a feast, but not one that he will enjoy,) and I wonder why she does not just ring his neck now. I will never know. The journey of her story will be closed to me.
       The inbuilt rhythm of the engine ticks and roars beneath me and I feel it's effort vibrate through the floor, through the seat, and I feel my head begin to droop, my eyelids heavy. I dream of water flowing on mossy stones, milky white, a bee buzzing with its serendipitous find of nectar in the rhododendron haze. He is hesitant but happy. And so, as I breathe more slowly, deeply, letting go of the cares and frustrations of my factory life, am I. My every day life is hidden behind a microscope, frames within frames of a bigger picture. It is good to stretch wide and yawn with the world.
     
The air breaks hiss and the door swings open at the bottom of the woodland trail. There is only one road to follow, no choice; onward and upward to the fresh air and space.  Follow the water to its source. Stop take a breath. Be hesitant, but be happy, and when you come to the waterfall, the source of refreshment, breathe deep of natures nectar and be satisfied.

A Legend Begins

       The chestnut Fell-mare was skittish as she skirted the great pool, unnerved by the shifting reflections of overhead branches, the squeak of stressed
sap and rustling grasses. It seemed a million roving spirits were hidden in the foliage and the grey green of the water became a veiled wall into another world. Damsel flies hovered and reversed between sunlight and shadow attempting to grapple with the bobbing mouths of tadpoles and inverted water-boatmen. She must reach the forge before nightfall if she was not to lose her way. She knew she was near as she reached the rocky outcrop topped with the wild damson tree. The blossom she had lain under at the height of spring was long gone and the fruit was full and enticing now, buzzing with drunken bees, some fallen fruit fizzed in pulpy fermentation under the mare's hooves.
       Like Bartleby's Fire the fear of what was to come spread through her people unchecked. The thought of a bigger invasion concreting at the news of the fleet now anchored down river. The long reaching arm of the insatiable beast stretched out from the body of Rome and would swallow everything in its path if they did not stand their ground. She must take action. She must rally her people. She would come before them armed, mounted, daubed in woad, dressed in the bear skin of her grandfather and the torque of her tribe. They would recognise her strength and rally their own.The strength of a free people who had no will to be conquered.
        As the thoughts and images of her warrior dream chased around in her head the mare brought her to the end of the trail, a green living wall, and whinnied at the sharp tang of the blacksmith's scorches in the air. Weapons had been forbidden by the governor and they had suffered many raids, losing valuable tools in the process, but she had traded all the corn and skins the people could spare, gathered broken tools, any metals she could, and given them to the safekeeping of the blacksmith. At great risk to himself he had vowed to bring them here and turn the raw material to their own purpose, moulding the metal to weapons of war, swords, axes, knives and arrows. She listened to see if the duet, hammer on anvil, could be heard but their voices were muted by the mossy stones and dull earth and by the song of the waterfall.
        She dismounted and led the mare behind the waterfall, drawing aside the skirt of ivy, a living wall protecting the sanctity of the gods' cave. Once out of sight she left the mare to stand,hobbled with a reed rope, and ventured deeper into the dark feeling her way along the smooth wet warts of limestone wall. As light gradually gave way to dark she became disoriented, and doubtful. What signs had there been? Was this a trap? Had she been betrayed?  But as she was about to turn back the promise of loyalty from the blacksmith was fulfilled. The bellows emptied their breath and a flare of orange light gave life and form to the shadow rock puppets on the walls. She glimpsed on the walls the drawings of old, deer leaping, hounds running, a moon gazing hare, an owl, a bear,symbol of the gods. She walked forward, confidence returning with every step.
       There was another vapour at work in the alchemy here. The smell of offerings, herbs and wild berries to appease the gods for the desecration of this, their sanctuary. And something still further, earthy and damp, she felt her pupils react to fungal fumes.The blacksmith recognised only an intruder, through eyes that were not his own, and grabbed a recently forged blade and roared at her,
      "Who goes there? By all the gods you are not welcome here." He was in the ecstasies of creation, a looseness of mind forged by mushroom mists, a poor bed fellow with the paranoia and fear that infected him. She knew she must be careful. "Whosoever you be, know I am no mere mortal, the gods protect me and you trespass against their goodwill."
      "Good blacksmith, it is I, Boudicca. The gods will have need to protect us all if we are to come through this alive." The anxiety made her voice sound harsh as they fell to the rock floor from the letterbox of her mouth and he fell to one knee.
       "Rise sir, you already do me great service. How goes it?" She offered her hand in a warriors welcome and he returned the gesture clenching her forearm.
       "I have your arrow heads lady" he said as he turned back to the anvil. She reached for the pile of cooled iron heads on his rough plank work bench, feeling the strength of the gods under the pitted surface. This iron had a will of its own, a will to fly, to bite, to kill. They were ready to bind to the shaft and follow their destiny. "These are for you alone lady, arrows worthy of a queen.  I have bound the heads with copper to catch the sun like your hair, so we will know your movements on the field. All the legions of hell will bow to our great warrior Queen. They will have no general to match you. Let fly your arrows and see the flame pierce the very heart of Rome."
      "You do me great honour blacksmith, I thank you, but I do not look to be queen, just to rid this land of a foreign plague."
She may yet be hauled into the belly of a ship and taken to the land where 'bong' trees grow and are shaped by slaves into birds and beasts to amuse, but she would not go quietly. Like the fierce she-bear at her centre she would protect her den. She would fight to the end.