The Revisiting
Today I walked a familiar and well-trodden path.I walked across brown winter fields, invented stories and passed daffodils. Giant trees and tiny birds flood the memory.Two railways once crossed here, and from the bridge we once remembered battles fought here long ago, and dreamt of new languages. New friendships blossomed here…
Barbed wire and bramble always bar the most inviting of paths, but really only the impossibility makes them so attractive. She in a hat and scarf examines a bird's nest, whilst talking of philosophy, and time travel, and whether worms might have monarchy.
We built a brick house, motorbikes knocked it down… a discarded toy accordion lay for months under this bridge until I burnt it. The bridge is now no longer a bridge, but blocked with a mountain of soil. Clay figures dried by the river, and by the sun. And the frost turns to snow, then to frost, then to life then to frost…
Arguments and games and dangerous home-made fireworks, fir trees and dogs, broken backs and campfires…
I walk over brown leaves (the colour of my shoes), and on grass (the colour of my coat), and wormcasts (the colour of brown leaves), and past hedges, and I fall into the ground that rushes up to meet me.
There can be no history without change.
-Slanning-
© by IAS, 1999
