Fernworthy Reservoir reflects our gratitude for the blue. But it has shrunk during the long days, and as it has pulled inward, old bones have surfaced.
An archaeologist's eye traces the lives of a village: hearths and paths of an old way which has been lost. No, not lost; drowned. Important people needed good water to drink. This village was emptied and flooded. Now we wait for a dry year to admire their stone huts-turned-circles. I find a chunk of clear quartz as big as my hand, offer a song in its stead. Has this rock been held before? These views, balm to wind-whipped minds, were once the for-granted frieze from door to door. It is a mixed place. It is a mixed day. But the sun is giving way and the water will rise again, smoothing sharp corners until all is soft and free as dust.
The turning is tangible. Led by the huge horse chestnut which stands alone, fire, stolen each moment from the sun, creeps across the leaves. The world is still green, but closer in...
...the chlorophyll crown is slipping and we are dripping in gold. Kicking up piles of gold. Laughing and kicking as the leaves rain down and the sun shines its fading hardest.
A girl, behind bars in a floral lane, sits alone in a stone courtyard, feeling the sun warm her back and staring forever into a handful of this last light. Soon she will be gone; sold.
A slow worm of pure gold visits us on its journey into the dark. Losing speed as it loses heat, a flickering tongue explores tiny spaces where it can be still for the long, cold months.
And I, drawing in and seeking the darker spaces, find the quiet voice of poems and paintings, prayers and passion, sounds louder now, and so, this:
Sunflower
My shaggy green coat hangs heavy.
I nod, blind, high over
the scatter of chattering charms
as they try to outshine their own fade.
I am gaunt, untidy,
out of place
in this trove of trinkets.
And then.
And then, in a burst of rapture
that opens, opens my eye,
the late light
blazes gratitude through me
and I am heliotrope,
head held high.
I stare unblinkingly
into the greatest eye of all.
The bees
desert the browning pretties
and come hungry to me.
I suckle them throught the bright times
and as the eye lowers,
flocks replace swarms.
The light is less and less.
I tire.
My head,
heavy once more,
droops
and I lean
until the earth
takes me back.
I dream of my children
as they open:
standing tall, tallest,
holding the gaze,
shining a beacon of bounty.
