Beside the pond
Pale sun, cloud filtered, falling toward dusk,
the early beginnings of twilight. In the pond,
two, three pale primrose lily buds slant
in the water or slope from the pads. Puce
fuchsia flowers hang nearby. The stunted
branches of a blighted hazel with frousty leaves.
Tiny catkins like caterpillars. The beech lemon-
lighted, leaves unfallen. All the plants growing
around the pond. Fish prowling, lazily.
A collared dove swinging in the bird feeder.
A clump of dock. The constant flow of traffic.
The animal ranges out, away from the pond
through the garden to the edgeland, Varna’s
domain, the peripheral green space bordered
by a ragged hedge of elm, metal railings,
a copse of dilapidated trees, ivy-smothered,
clumped around the red brick substation.
Hereabouts, amidst the spider tangled branches,
the sour ground smells of urine, rotting wood.
In the alley, by the back gate that opens
to the trees, there’s a field of dry leaves,
dun and earth and mud and moth and
cocoon and russet and pale pistacchio,
gold, ochre and faun and eau de nil
and dust and dusk and night black, sodden.
The elm beyond the gate is dying.
Its ceramic bark ingrained with
verdigris and dull green moss.
She’s lying still, or rising on the impact,
doing both, both leaving and remaining.
She falls, her foot caught in a trailing root
but quickly rises, albeit blinded on one side
her eye embedded in the earth.
She upbraids herself. Varna, she says,
be warned, this is a dangerous valley.
Blood streams from her face between
the fingers she clamps to the socket.
Her eye sees downward into earth and history
and up and out to tree and bird and cloud.
Centuries of time dissolve in weather, battles,
weary lifetimes of arduous work, back-broken toil.
Varna dies or simply fades away, obsolete,
belief in her decays. But her eye gleams on.
Her eye sees all.I seem to be going against the advice of a very sage gentleman…
‘It is evident enough that no one who writes now can use the Pagan deities and mythology; the only machinery, therefore, seems that of ministering spirits, the ghosts of the departed, witches, and fairies, though these latter… seem likely to be of little further assistance in the machinery of poetry. ‘
Samuel Johnson as quoted by James Boswell in Life of Johnson
I hope you’re enjoying your journey through Aldilà.
Look out for more of Aldilà tomorrow…
