hillwalker
09-07-2010, 04:23 PM
MAIRY’S DITCH
“Always strike a woman in her face,” my father’s drunken litany.
My shy scrutiny from the wreckage of our kitchen table
as he performs the practised slapstick of tender punches and clumsy clouts;
lessons quickly grasped from the tethered look in my mother’s bruised eyes,
the lukewarm kisses from her broken lips,
my teeth a vampire’s gag away from tasting blood.
Mairy was no better;
as vain as they come.
She could not bear them knowing her man hit her,
or have them think she gave him cause to.
Many a night my daggers-drawn look,
foreplay to those same old accusations
bandied time and time again;
her nervy smile a whiplash to my shoulders, a barb to my belly.
Other nights had held a sky full of stars
and the huge fires we lit sent sparks racing like released birds
set on joining some celestial migration.
Next to mine her slender brown legs and narrow hips,
more boy than woman.
Ribs rippling under her skin, a riptide of anticipation,
breasts hardly there, hair smelling of meadow,
my flesh relishing her every move.
Had some other man captured her heart
I could never have borne the thought
of some other lips smeared on hers tasting of blackberry,
of some other fingers tracing the bitter sweat across her brow
after a day with the horses,
some other hands pressed to her throat perhaps, flexed with anger,
some other man discovering for himself
her most secret parts;
her silver-tongued laugh,
her warm-cat-smell on the days she bled.
This way is easier for us both.
A gentle laid to ground forever sleep
in this bramble nest trap of a ditch.
An undrowned ophelia, untainted, unfurrowed, untrammelled,
her bridal bed a mantle of frost-bleached grass and trampled bracken.
She lies less than two feet away from me but I can no longer reach…..
I am too late to weave grass back into frozen soil,
coax the fallen leaves back into bud,
unblade the blade or staunch her bloated sunset.
If I could put the breath back into her breast,
the mirror back into her eyes,
pulse to her throat…..
Branch shadows cast by the moon
drag their talons across her pale skin but she remains unscathed.
Nothing can harm her.
I am her protector.
Kneeling at the edge of Eden
I can still see the shiny, brown rim of the top of her left ear.
The wrinkle across her forehead like a scar of lightning.
The frayed green ribbon knotted in her dark hair.
The collar of her blouse turned up
and the hole where the sleeve is unravelling at the armpit.
The swell of her thighs and bottom,
and her right knee folded beneath where she fell.
One shoe off to one side.
Her legs bare and beaded with blood from the thorns.
The chipped nails of the toes on her bare foot;
a footprint of dust on its sole.
Someone else may find us here
in time;
a fox maybe,
or a farmer’s boy tying up his father’s hedges.
H
“Always strike a woman in her face,” my father’s drunken litany.
My shy scrutiny from the wreckage of our kitchen table
as he performs the practised slapstick of tender punches and clumsy clouts;
lessons quickly grasped from the tethered look in my mother’s bruised eyes,
the lukewarm kisses from her broken lips,
my teeth a vampire’s gag away from tasting blood.
Mairy was no better;
as vain as they come.
She could not bear them knowing her man hit her,
or have them think she gave him cause to.
Many a night my daggers-drawn look,
foreplay to those same old accusations
bandied time and time again;
her nervy smile a whiplash to my shoulders, a barb to my belly.
Other nights had held a sky full of stars
and the huge fires we lit sent sparks racing like released birds
set on joining some celestial migration.
Next to mine her slender brown legs and narrow hips,
more boy than woman.
Ribs rippling under her skin, a riptide of anticipation,
breasts hardly there, hair smelling of meadow,
my flesh relishing her every move.
Had some other man captured her heart
I could never have borne the thought
of some other lips smeared on hers tasting of blackberry,
of some other fingers tracing the bitter sweat across her brow
after a day with the horses,
some other hands pressed to her throat perhaps, flexed with anger,
some other man discovering for himself
her most secret parts;
her silver-tongued laugh,
her warm-cat-smell on the days she bled.
This way is easier for us both.
A gentle laid to ground forever sleep
in this bramble nest trap of a ditch.
An undrowned ophelia, untainted, unfurrowed, untrammelled,
her bridal bed a mantle of frost-bleached grass and trampled bracken.
She lies less than two feet away from me but I can no longer reach…..
I am too late to weave grass back into frozen soil,
coax the fallen leaves back into bud,
unblade the blade or staunch her bloated sunset.
If I could put the breath back into her breast,
the mirror back into her eyes,
pulse to her throat…..
Branch shadows cast by the moon
drag their talons across her pale skin but she remains unscathed.
Nothing can harm her.
I am her protector.
Kneeling at the edge of Eden
I can still see the shiny, brown rim of the top of her left ear.
The wrinkle across her forehead like a scar of lightning.
The frayed green ribbon knotted in her dark hair.
The collar of her blouse turned up
and the hole where the sleeve is unravelling at the armpit.
The swell of her thighs and bottom,
and her right knee folded beneath where she fell.
One shoe off to one side.
Her legs bare and beaded with blood from the thorns.
The chipped nails of the toes on her bare foot;
a footprint of dust on its sole.
Someone else may find us here
in time;
a fox maybe,
or a farmer’s boy tying up his father’s hedges.
H