Category Archives: Enchantment

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Der Blaue Reiter

I’m careful with myself today as though I’m a blue glass horse like the one I had as I child and I’ve just turned up in a small box, packed with polystyrene to keep it safe.

I remember the thinness of its legs, how I could see through them and if I lifted it to my face and pressed it close to my skin, all the world was cool and and hued in blue. I never named the horse, it didn’t seem to need it. It was mine to ride in the middle of the night when no-one else understood me, but he did.

And it was always male, always strong, he always understood me and I’d pull myself up by his mane and clamber on. We’d ride, it would take me out across the fields, always jumping hedges with no care and I would ride as though I was born to have a horse beneath me, feeling his warmth and strength against my thighs. In the middle of the night with my hair streaming out in chaotic ribbons behind me, rippling in the darkness like the ink blue clouds breaking dawn.

There was a sense of being edgeless, without walls to bind me when I rode, timeless even, almost formless, just the presence of his warmth beneath me and the shimmering hold of the night.

Afterwards, I’d place my horse back on the windowsill and rub my legs, how cold they were, how thin but I’d escaped myself just for a while. I’d turn my blue glass horse to face the window, always looking out, always focussed on the places he could take me and today I am so careful with myself. I note the places where I’m chipped but the light still shines through me and if I rest a while longer I will get beyond this windowsill where I seem to live.

And on the blustering wind the words seem to come at me through at the window, ‘don’t drop me, please don’t let me break,’ they say. They rattle the glass on this spring day calling autumn, in this muddled mess of seasons where I live.

I am careful with myself today, so lift me up and hold me close, watch the world turn to blue again. And if we’re quiet in the middle of the night, we can charge through the fields, we can kick up the earth, feel our muscles light up in the moonlight.

I am careful with myself today, I am my small glass horse. I am blue, fragile but the sun still shines out through me.

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Luminescence

I wanted to be that little girl, right there. That girl, and she was four or maybe five. I passed her by on the roadside, in the sunlight, in the delerious white-out of a spring afternoon.

And look at that girl, I thought. Just look at her and I held her in my mind for three seconds or maybe four.

She shimmered on the roadside, on the pavements grey, in her sparkling silver padded jacket which fired back photons to anyone who dared to look.

She lit up the streets, defying smudged reflections of rushing people, of chaotic traffic on grimed windows. And passing by upturned hot wasps on peeling windowsills, she jumped the cracks in the pavement because it kept her safe.

Her baby pink flared jeans flashed candyfloss at anyone who noticed as she hopscotched herself along. Armoured bears growled behind her, goblins sneered up through drains but she didn’t care.

Because it was a springtime afternoon and the blossom frittered away the hours all around her and city sparrows sang joyous, despite the fumes.

Just for a moment if I could be that little girl, casting halos around the litter, that pulsing, beaming dance of limbs, I would be free.

And I passed by the little girl and held her in my mind, like a retina stain on my memories of what it felt like to sparkle under blossom. What it felt like to be magnificent in the spring.

And I passed by with her shimmering in a review mirror, with the candy pink jeans just a flutterering on my shoulder, like the falling petals in my pinned up hair.

And for a second or two, or maybe three, I remembered how I used to feel.

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Down The Rushy Glen

I will build a house of feathers and hide myself away. I will make an eiderdown embroideried in your name and under it, the weight of silk will keep me warm. The feathers will bend in the wind, glistened layers, diamond friends and they will protect me like they do, like they promised.

I will fashion out some wainscotting from the pebbles at stream, drop them into my sodden skirt, scooch them up to me. And with the lace hem tattered at my waist, I’ll leave and heave them home.

And the window frames, I will weave from pussy willow sticks and when I pull the curtains closed I will stroke each tiny bud. The curtains will be gossamer, of the whisps of web and morning dew that coat my gentle lawn.

My bed, my thankful, grateful bed will be sewn of a thousand daisy chains, round and round and round again until they form a pad, my place to rest.

And windows made from the frozen lake will keep me warm and safe. Hard caked ripples lost in time, like sugar drips of popsicles down a young girl’s arm. And I’ll look out through the ice before I pull my clouds across. My plumes and flumes and drapes of cowslip stalks and then to bed.

And crows will give me comfort, will shield me from the storm. Their wings across my shoulder blades will soothe and calm and over my tiny feet, stoats will curl and nuzzle down, their fur, to balm my toes.

My basket will be by the door, willow, of course. And tomorrow, yes tomorrow, I will pick bilberries and bramleys and my nails will bleed in juice.

And I will bake, bake the very best of apple pies. I will fill the woodland up with them, as far as the creatures can see. Their tiny faces peering out, sniffing the air, eyes shining as they wait. And sliver fluted dishes will carry my pies to their door.

Yes, I will bake again, so the pastry will lull me to sleep and my feathered home will wrap me up, will keep me dry and warm.

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And Everything Sparkled

There was a girl wandering round the town centre, yet not really a girl, more a young woman. And if you looked closely, there were sparkles left by her feet.

It would be late in the day on the eve, the eve of Christmas and she’d search. She’d search for the perfect gift and wishing the best of all things to every shopkeeper in her path, she would make her way out of the town.

And her father would have been waiting in the car at the base of the hill. She’d bundle herself back in, bags and boxes, packets and tales of her trip and they’d leave.

At home her mother was swaddled in the smell of baking and the pastry would melt in her mouth.

And this young women was the girl tucked up in bed, was the wide eyed child listening out for bells. And later she’d wait for the rustle of bin bags and her father laying out gifts.

It was this girl who’d push open the frosted lounge door on Christmas morning, to the settee packed, bursting with bright paper and symmetrical delights.

Years later that woman chewed on carrots and hid a sleigh bell under the tree. And their son would find it in the morning and his giggles filled their world.

And then now.

Now it’s the woman on the settee with a candle, holding tight to the girls in her mind. The carrots lie beneath a smaller tree, a motif tree, not the magnificent trees of childhood or marriage. But a just-enough-tree in the corner, still bringing light to her world.

It would be bedtime soon for the woman and the candle. Curling up once more, she’d hold all her Christmases tight in her arms.

And in the morning they’d parade around her, spinning, twirling, laughing in delight.

But for now she would blow out the candle, and watch the endless sky.

Maybe, just maybe she’d see something dart across it, a flash of light, a sparkle like the footprints that she left. The girls who lived in the woman, the woman who was made of the girls, who still believed.

Bed time, sleep time, they whispered to each other. Nearly time to put on the show again.

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Teoría de Ondas #5

The mint leaf rested effortless on the hot water’s surface tension, so it had just enough support. And in her morning mug the sky trembled, the trees rippled in their inverted world.

She thought of reflections of the restaurant ceiling, upside down in her wine glass, garnet red and rounded, with its full deep sun warmed taste.

The sun was up in the Now, drying leaves, dropping pale light across her golden browns. But she wasn’t there, she had stood in ancient ruins in the morning and now, back on the coach trip their bellies rumbled from the early start.

Lunch came, with perfect pasta, passing bowls to strangers across a carnival of colours. She drank it all in, at the long wooden table where they sat. She looked right and up to the violet curtains, gold organza fluttering, how they seemed to light up despite the dimness of the candle lit room. And if she took out her small camera she would capture them and have the moment frozen for all time.

But nothing could hold the colours, like jewels against the window and she watched the sunbeams dance amongst the dust as though everything was slowing down. It was as though the moment was calling out to her, look at me, look at me, this is a second to hold. Side by side, in the flickering dim and although her camera could never do justice to the light, she knew her mind would keep it safe. And there they were in that restaurant with high ceilings and wooden walls, sharing food with the strangers of their day.

And later, much later, the fountains and bridges faded to a hush, to a crowded, shoulder to shoulder throng looking up. Quiet, neck-straining to take in the paintings up above and how strange it seems now. That oddness in the thought of rubbing shoulders with no fear, and they stood crammed in together, tasting the air, breathing without masks, without hand gel.

She dropped back to the Now and the day that lay ahead of her but it was tinged, it was softened around the edges like the quality of light. And if she breathed in long and deep she was full, she was lost again to the scent of the Sistine Chapel.

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Fragments – Belonging

August 7th

And there were small footsteps from their home, running to the car and a wave and she would see him later.

The woman and the kettle sat in an empty room. But how full it was, how it pulsed and sparkled, full of every second they had lived. Bright with the moments, charged with the normal-ness of their life.

And she sat while their boy played elsewhere. Men and boxes came and went like the shifting thoughts inside her, until the door closed one last time and she thanked the spaces that became the past.

And there they sat, waiting in Starbucks, waiting for the call and for the keys, until they came. And their possessions poured into a new place, to fill it up, packed with their hours.

And later the small footsteps returned and they ran and they charged down a new hallway. She stood there seeing his beaming face and all the moments lined up ahead.

And now as a different kettle boils, she feels it all, every second of their world spinning in her hot green tea. Around and around in every spiral, safe inside the mug, inside her heart.

And they were there on that old green carpet that they left behind and they were here on the new blue carpet that filled up their home.

She sipped from the mug in the Now, hoisted up her skirts again and carried on.

August 9th

Always there in that morning before their evening, in the morning before their night. And her skirt waited and her hair waited, long and thick and dark. And he would be leaving soon, heading north with his plans, with his ways and her day would unfold, quiet, in the way it used to do.

Always.

This day, neurons buzzing forming shapes telling her stories again and the Now fell away, her aging body swooned and they appeared.

Navigating. A closeness. A certain intune-ness in the swish of her skirt, in the whiteness of her crinkled top.

Always under sap heavy trees and he took her home in his old car.

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1999 – One More Gift

If she stared hard for a moment through her kitchen, past the kettle, to the wall, she would dissolve.

And as she breathed out she would see them, out for shopping in the dark. That after-Christmas-travel feel, that tired apprehension of the new and she wore red fleece. 

And she breathed out again, past her kettle to the tiles on the wall, the shadow under the cupboard formed a partition by the toaster and she dropped back. 

The carpark was lit up, late Christmas and busy people buying booze, but not herself. 
And she’d just pop next door first to the pharmacy, she’d catch him up, she said. 

The fittings have all gone now, the aisles and the shelves where she bent down, where she compared the products till she found one. 

And sometimes, even now when she’s in the supermarket by the clothes rails that extended into the place where she had knelt, she sees herself. She feels, she has no separation from that girl. 

And the heating throbs in the present, the radiator warms her where she stands but she’s not there. 

She’s crossing the carpark in tired ‘Christmas lights, and just later, she’s catching him up in the shop. He’s there putting new things in the trolley, treats for New Year’s Eve, though they’d be out.

She hurries up to join him and her hip rubs the inside of her jacket, on the right, where the packet in her pocket makes itself known to her. 

She feels how long her hair was, how dark and not like now and no one knew about the packet in her pocket but she did. 

And shopping would happen and trolleys filled and piled into the car. Then they’d be home. Taking bags in, rustling, planning and while he put the things away she crept upstairs.

And now. Even now. There are no moments in between that one and this and she is quivering and shaking and sees the handle on the door.

She seems to see everything as if for the first time, as if the minutiae of her world stopped by to say hello. To say ‘here we are, this is your life now,’ as if she’d woken from a dark place and now tiptoeing through to the end of the century, she was just coming home.

He was downstairs watching TV and somehow she wandered down their wooden stairs. They opened the shortbread a friend had given them and sat quiet, watching nonsense on the screen.

But she was sparkling on the inside and almost wondered if he could hear it, like a thousand tiny glass bells tinkling through her form. 

She stared out with no focus at the TV and one day later she would give him her perfect gift to end the year.

And now her kitchen lights shone down on her in her aging but she wasn’t there. She was sat next to him, she was shining.

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The Art of Navigation

And suddenly I’m back as though I never went away, as though the trees have been upholding me. And I stand here, now, in the roar and thunder of leaves, in the gentle kiss of rain onto my hands and weather soothes. 

Tiny pin pricks of water dance across my fingers and I feel. How could I have been so far? How could I have moved from that perfect day? But I hadn’t. Not at all.

It’s in these moments that I see the mystery of time, that I reverberate with it deep inside my core. It seems a joke, a convenience that we tell ourselves, that we are here or there, then or now but I know that we are both.

And in these heightened places I have no form, just a sense of energy, of feelings. In my garden, on the fringes of this storm I am far away. I am in the car park at the Inn and that skirt swishes around my ankles and we leave.

Tiny bells blown by the winds that blow me now and I can feel it, years and miles from here. The cord around my waistband, jingles and in our car park, on the edge of our world, the moments line up ahead.

I am here.

In my young body, I am old, my vacant womb is waiting and somehow as we drove away, I rippled, ancient. I eased out into myself. This self, olden me, wiser me, slipping between the girl and the woman with you always on my shoulder, just like then. 

A robin emerged from the bamboo, he appeared in my peripheral vision, as if to wink or raise its eyes. It sat watching me, watching it and all sense of movement dropped away, till we were locked, bird and women, woman and bird, neither one of us moving but both of us remembering the fledglings that we were. 

I shimmered, called to him and head in the air, he hopped just close enough for food and then away. I know he watches me from the bushes, I feel him close. 

The sky is swollen now, beating puddles at my feet but I am under the robin’s wing where I belong and there, protected by his feathers, I wear my black and white skirt, my crinkled white blouse is crisp against the summer sun and we are young.

Meals come and go, car wheels spin until home and to covers that hold us like these wings. Time means nothing to me today.
I am this heavy rain, this breeze against my cheeks and I am still. 
The sun wants to come out, to dry out the robin’s wings. But we both shelter. Somewhere a rainbow will be forming, I can feel it in the lightening of the sky. Somewhere I wear that skirt, always and under these wings, we’re still young.

I know this moment well. It’s for keeps.

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Circle Theorem

These trees know, they seem to swirl today as if to show me. They bend, weighed and twisted but still grow. And the cedar where our small son climbed with friends, (when the children who squeal in the park were not yet cells, when the parents who came to create them had not even met,) and our small son learned to clamber back then.

He climbs now, hour upon hour later and our moon has moved around us many times, stars have imploded and the tree leans in towards our home, its foundation weakened, but it still found a way.

Our son, a man in the mirror that his Father used, negotiating formulas instead of fronds, rearranging coefficients instead of crayons and in the echo of him on the carved out hollows in our tree, I see us all.

I strain my neck to look for seagulls but the sky is quiet, clouds brush away the blue like a hand stroking head, like a comfort to rely on and everything swoons.

Out boy morphs to a man, saturated with number and possibility and we are all in the trees, we are every leaf and rustle of unseen things, we are the fragile wings of the birds, of the things that flit and land and time cannot touch us and we are here, still together.

We are everywhere, integrated and we are strong.

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Quayside Keeps

Such a quiet bird, she thought and then a sky song spiralled out. And it sang as though it always had time for feathers, as though this was its home. And she saw herself, ship high and blown, above the docks on rising waves and it was here, next the creaking beasts up top and with blustered hair, that she grew. 

Here, that her sense of wings exploded to the seas, it was here and always would be. Down underneath its hulk, by the men–shouts and leaden ropes there would be bicycle wheels. On pavements grey there would be spokes turning rubber, metal rubbing, gears changing and younger than her, his speckled legs would be pushing on the pedals that she couldn’t see. 

And there he was, escaped and expanded, exploring the docks by himself. White–out at his side, slab–steel towering high and he looked up. Painted letters sang out her name and he was there, adrenaline pumping, muscles aching, boundless and new on his bike.

And he grinned, up and up, to the top of ship, he squinted in the light, hair with a single curl at the front that zinged up like hope, like irrepressible joy and he was young. 

She looked down, wings nestling in her back, thin greying hair, a testament to travel and as grunts of men hauled ropes and chains released her, she swayed towards him. 

He paused on his bike, so young and persistent, with a button bright mind, sabatier sharp, the boy who took her hand across the years and from the quayside his story burbled into hers, in the churn and spume, in the chaos of waves, his eyes locked onto hers, always and he freed her. 

Wings ruffled bright, as her day–song followed the clouds, she saw him, and because of him – a boy on a bike, she flew.