A Shadow in Yucatan (6 page)

There is a
house in the hills where expectant mothers wait, splitting and
sharing the kindling of hope, and rocking their babies to
life...

Curved bellies
precede the slow paced day, and announce the imminent hour; paring,
cooking, preserving fruit, searching the wide white sky.

Until they are
delivered, their unmolested dream may seed itself in prayer, and
fruit in lasting health...

‘
If I were you I’d
go there, it’s the only chance you’ll get...to be alone
together...If money is a problem we could subsidise...’

‘
That kind of money
I can find. Now when can she go?’

‘
As soon as she can
pack her bag…’

‘
Without her mother,
it’s the best we can do...Take it darling...I shall be happy to
think if I can do nothing else, I can, at least, do this. Promise
Miriam one thing...You will try to be happy...hold your fat stomach
and sing. Set the child up for happiness, somebody else can
knit.’

In an orange
orchard, Stephanie succumbed to a scent, lethargic even for bees,
and dreamt a dream through the grasses of over-ripe summer.
A mirage trapped in honey.

Lying in a
basket under olive trees, the lucid perception dissolved the slight
wind on her tongue.
The sun through wicker, bristled her cheek.

The trees above
were vivid with advice, their supplications threaded on
glaciers,
their consolations beads along branches...

A naked baby
boy breasted the hay-stalks on solid certain feet, handed her a
wooden bowl, touched her forehead and laughed...

Light plaited
stalks into shadow, flickered its tongues of warm snake.
Teased the clenched palm into opening...
She caught nothing but air, air to spread on her face...on the
tongue delirious, cool in the damp warm neck.
Air was spinal ecstasy; air was bubble-blown, vapid blue space.

Green was
willow, willow, willow...
Light a prism of shifting cell.
Water the drifting necklace of leaves that swung from the throat of
shade

Water was water
below, below the ankle-flex, sun-happy toe.
Light was water sound.
Music the coloured hexagonal beads, that pass between sky and
ground.

The
outstretched finger of cypress reached for the thimble sky.
Dim with fledgling purpose, then began the inchoate sound...
All sound, nacreous sound...
Over sand the sibilant sea,
the low moan of bark before curling,
the crack of whip branch rending, the booming forest at eve.

Where sound and
sight parted, there ploughs the milk white ox, steady as leather,
foggy as stone.
Harassed by the axle, tailing the shivering joist, wading through
the barking dog, tossing the restive fly.

Nights are
cloth soup silence.
The pressure-lamp hiss like a wasp churning oil, trapping space,
asthmatic for air.
Un-consoled by the hammer tap-tapping of shoes which when stilled,
blows a ring of bright face.
Causing the dancing arms to blur, and shadows to leap and
curse.

Space is a
sharpened pencil that writes a regular day: White linen snapping at
the grass, water at heel to the pump.
The sky subservient to the brim of a bonnet, the mouth to the
resolute spoon...
Only the wind remains urchin, flying music, and booting the
moon.

Stephanie woke
to a smouldering afternoon, pregnant with thunder.

A woman, now conscious of weight
she stands on articulate feet
to meet the curling whip slip wind, with a hitched up
petticoat...

Pinned and
poised on a vertical thread a dryad is drawn from the earth
to spindle the light from the anxious trees, she begins to slowly
rotate.

Flashing quick
iridescence, she holds the prism of fear.
Eddied from greenwood, tossed, caught, thrown forward from branch
to branch like a firework trailing smoke.

It dies with
sudden indolence snuffing its candle tongue, awaits an insolent
frisking, by the heedless back-slapping wind...

It comes.
She takes it standing, welcomes its hands up her skirt.

Smells its
moist breath searching,
shakes her hair in eloquent spray,
lifts besotted arms in worship, grinds her heels in the mesmerized
clay.

Appeased, it
retreats smiling, licks resin from the split in a stone.

She stands in
the whirlpool of luminous light, while trees discard bright fruit,
to roll like luscious jewels, and break open on the grass...

Trepidation,
thirst, devotion bind these barren bearing folk while...
the prodigal squall dallies in the distant thunder- smoke.

Focussed on by
frenzied clouds wielding a blinding knife...
harassed by quivers of showering steel from archers massed on the
flank...

Fatigued by
peccadilloes with young larches, nubile corn...
He gathers his full manhood to shake the shoulders of the
earth...

The landscape
lies down.
Spreads its limbs, and turns its head.
The cumulus mainsail darkens, lifts its scudding skirt, boils the
seas in anger, braces a hidden keel...

Imploring
hysterical insects fret at a cello string...

His teeth sink
in earth’s jugular.
He swiftly snaps her back. Crack.
Wraps his thighs about her, and drenches with his seed.

Drowning she
drinks from a bottomless thirst while he loves her from his elbow,
and cracks his silver whip..

Bone snap, neck
lash, back, back, back.

Hounds chained
to his chariot, growl on blood-lust bent; his eunuch plumed
horsemen are shod with kettledrums.

The immaculate
artillery sprays the gusted arrows, pause, refit, and swing
up-wind... following with dentist drills, the skittish novice
breeze...

Slaps her
cheek
Stings her eye
Beats her buttock
Bites her thigh
Then fulsome and unstinting takes her open mouth...

*****

In love’s
apotheosis, the battalions withdraw,
evaporating into cloud, with grumbling after- thought.
Cracking one slow rolling rump, spitting, not quite spent...
leaving rain to cherish bruises, bitten in torment...

Soft, he lifts
up every weeping leaf; licks each saturated bud.
Bathes pain and past together in mercury and salt.
Rests his quivering nostril in her aromatic ear
Whispers unbelieving joy and strokes her rivulet hair

1

Duck-dipping
head, redoubling fist;
down the bottom of the river kissed.
Here must I sit
eating berries from my hat
at the elbow of the river, while you nestle in its lap
.

2

This wide
boarded room, barred by reflected light, imprisons time in
whispers, between the clattering of cups.

All of time is
curved, concave or convex.

Future time
floats forward, only held in check by the muscle of this moment and
the bow of bended neck.

The past is
expressed in the crook of candid knee reminiscing over toenails,
and the interrupting lap.

While the curve
of time present falls across the patient cheek;
the loop of threaded needle, the sprung embroidery hoop.

In the aspic of
the present that congeals time’s clear straw blood, is pulse and
retraction, the pump and suck of life.

Antecedent and
descendent turn slower somersault.
Each swallowing the other’s tail, confined in Now’s torn heart.

But tell, from where you see
it, upside down...
Are we standing on our heads
?

3.

Your life has been
gathered in this scented orange grove, (bridal flower brought to
fruit), and in pomander, clove.

At evening, out walking, gravity plucked at her
back.
A pain like the stroke of a rowing eight was raised by her
surprise...
Doubting, she continued under the gothic sky.