Down Drown Down
Bed of Gown
Let us be rid of this useless town

You write this on your exercise book (next to your name) and pass it to me in secret under the desk.

Jonty Giles notices and writes another verse (which he sells to me).

Maroon in colour, unkempt, I leaf through the pages of your mathematics book.

Each equation is a love note to me.

I return Jonty’s favour.

Your name is Jane, but everybody calls you Marigold on account of your gold-straw hair. You live in a red-brick cottage plain in character but full of gifts. It has a spare room (but more of that later).

We climb the hill that overlooks the Silbury Mound. I tell tales of battles fought and warriors slain, but know the mound to be empty.

We repeat this trip every year and tie a ribbon to the straggly bush (where the sheep rest) and slowly we leave our childhood years.

The wheat sized grasses never change, nor the view to the distant downs. But as we grow older and thirsty for knowledge we forget the innocence of our formation.

The bush is an army of colour but is ignored.

Ours is now a fallow ceremony and after a while we discontinue our tradition.

Young Jonty Giles was found dead, a shotgun in his grasp, his pen grounded. He will not write another word.

The town has lost its only poet.

In the Norman church, another candle is extinguished. The red-brick cottage with the spare room is up for sale. Your mother cannot find another poet to fill the void and travellers are not the same.

The hill is abandoned and the ribbons run ragged in their own distress lay dormant.

We move to another town, your exercise book wish runs true but as we age the new town does not age with us.

We feel strangers in our own home.

You ask me to write verses as I used to do, but I decline feigning tiredness of spirit. (You were never aware of Jonty).

In our sixth decade business takes me back to our former town. I conclude quickly and visit Jonty’s grave.

The years have covered his inscription. As my final gift I clean his stone and find a verse unknown to all.

It is for Marigold and is to be read on the stillest night of the year.

I offer payment, but this is declined, all that he wishes that I visit him again when passing.

I agree and leave with the verse.

I carve it into the trunk of the ribbon bush.

During a later month, excusing nostalgia. I take Marigold to the hill that overlooks the mound.

We tie a maroon ribbon to the bush.

She is pleased with this ceremony but finds it empty.

We sit in the wheat grass, Marigold reads from her memories until the sky darkens. She suggests we leave but I excuse her.

 Let us wait for the stars

It darkens, but the stars are dull.

She reads by the light of insects that hover in the still night air.

You are reading
lit only by the light
of the fireflies

I will polish the stars
so that they may reflect
the morning bright

This is my gift to you

We later returned to this town of our childhood and lived the red-brick cottage with the spare room. But it is not spare anymore.

It is now occupied by a poet.