d i s t r a c t i o n s (wolf part nine)

Ardent again,

Bereft, alone,

yet still skilled,

He found some small part within

That kept despair at bay:

Called upon himself to occupy

These dark spaces with activity,

Hacking at his dead heartwood

with work’s numbing hatchett.

Became an actor first,

Then ran a troop,

 

Became happy in some odd state

Everyday a different place

No time to sit and cogitate

Roll up Roll up

Roll out roll down

One night here

Then another town

Telling himself he did not see

Her face in hay-bales, country lanes

In green of barley, fields or trees:

As summer heat fought icy pain.

Once in Awre, near Blakeney

( that place where the old Severn River

washed up bodies of the drowned:

salmon fishers, deceased

searchers for sturgeon,

Allis shad and grey mullet)

The river wind blew so cold

That a farmer’s wife took pity

Took all the actors to her kitchen,

And fed them all: (no mean feat),

Venison and pheasant stew,

home made cider poured from old oak,

and afters too, baked apples

Maisemore picked sweet pippins.

A wood fire blazed

With three year seasoned wood,

A dry heat that invited

Deeper thoughts than of mere pennies taken at the door.

Warm actors dozed at kitchen’s station

Wrapt in blissful cogitation.

After this moment of perfect time

Of flickering firelit frozen time

Perfect to all, the soubrette spoke

This is heaven , we’re cleansed of sins

All laughed, in hope ‘twas not a joke

But Ardent felt again that wind

Blown from half a world away

And thought

She is only half a world away,

Only half a world away.