The Mythicals – 1: the illusion of travelling

A counterpoint to the previous poem about Archie and the commemoration of life and death.

“the tectonic plates which shift beneath our feet

drive the motion of the swollen seas,

their tides in turn the rhythm of our hearts

and we, certain of our karmic being, spin,

spinning into the orbit of every sun we see,

believing we are the epicentre of …..”

(AMM – Blinkered We Ride the Stellar Surf – 2019)

the paper’s headline read “The Body in the Woods”;

a dogwalker found her – “i thought she was praying.

she was kind of kneeling against the tree.

it was only when Charlie barked and she didn’t move

i knew there was something wrong. i touched her.

she was cold. called the police straight off.”

travelling she had been, part of the group which camped

in the fields across The Howard, shuttling in and out,

their pickup vans heavy with garden waste tipped

onto the rising piles fired every night, warming

and lighting, the smoke stirring the locals’ bile

(the developer’s too – a national concern

with concrete plans submitted for three hundred units)

who would have to foot the hefty clean-up bill.

the note she left behind said: ‘i want life to be fixed, stilled.”

her brothers strung two effigies, hers, her lover’s,

dressed, to a branch –  twenty days left swinging –

to call her wandering spirit back, help it root,

rest easy in this place, at peace with her death,

travelling proxied through the motion of the earth.   

I know well that place where she was found;

a birch, uprooted lies, the thick strands which once fed

now dry, its dead length peeling, core rotting exposed.

what force tore this once sky-touched tower down?

the wind rolls through the new leafing trees

and their whispered answer traceless disappears.