Part 3
The warmth of early summer calms
and sooths
Bring sense and purpose to her
work,
And poultices of herbs and
mustard baths
Become, at least in her eyes, a
dull stock in trade.
Always full of joy and love,
Though dreaming for daring work.
To others from outside
greenvalley,
Her healing hands; Merely
miraculous:
Bones well set, and knitting
speeded,
Fevers stayed and rheumatics
eased,
A young and ancient quaker child
Certainly had the gift and added
value to the farm.
Spoke to old grandams and
herbalists
As an equal and with ease,
But still did the milking and
made butter
Kept her feet upon the ground
And in the world she lived in,
Though she felt the edge’s lure.
One day, and this is no repeated
myth,
And I think just because she
found she could,
She send a thought far abroad
And touched the ice queen’s mind,
Who, at first trembled at such
calm strength,
But then noted the source, and
gasped in wonder,
At her friend and sister’s bold
ascension.
Two halves, two fictions,
thoughts and dreams
Met and linked, decided who was
who,
And whose was whose
And shared some secrets of ice
and earth,
And Our Quaker saw her sister’s
seasons
and the length of different days
as vital ingredients to her
power,
as time and rhythm to be kept to,
as winter days were short and
arctic summers long,
so one’s dark power grows, and as
summer hot the north,
love grows and the dark power
rests.
And then they parted, closer than
before,
As Ardent was at the chamber door
And as her mind travels now
seemed almost common place,
The day after this, anchoring her
soul
With a ring of homegrown herbs,
Help in place by ash and willow
wands,
She let her mind wander to those
she met
One Christmas in my
once-upon-a-time.
And I felt her thought and breath
upon me,
As I potted on sweet marjoram and
thyme,
And she smiled and blessed my
patch,
And then I felt a change, as she
sensed you.
And she left my little plot
Born on the wings of her power’s
storm
There was left behind a thought,
Just a hint where once was ice
As miss cloaked and implacable,
Felt the rhythms of your life,
And saw you sleep and get no rest
A wind and earth change
And sea breeze weather change
As she wound and grew
And felt the rhythm of the
seasons
As they affected you,
And I was left with her own
thought
That perhaps you are indeed the
ice queen
on some part of our earth
And just perhaps some part of you
Is attuned to different days
From the ones you live in where
you are.
Perhaps your dreaming trances,
Balanced on the edge of power,
Are bringing you to where your
heart lives,
To where the days are as long as
your body needs,
Bringing you to where you need to
be
And then this she- thought passed
on
And her sabots were but echoes in
my clay
And hers are thoughts that have
crossed worlds
And this is how it is in Albion
today
I see her now, still, as I potter
before sleep,
In her garden, talking to the
herbs,
Smiling across distance and
imagination
At a rose red setting sun
In a garden she begun
At what this green valley girl
Has seen
And done.
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