As Lightning Might: Sixth Tattersby

 

 

The Folly

Tattersby

 

 

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As Lightning Might

 

Their leader is not unwell. No, not harmed.

Please leave off, dear.

Curious, no more. A nuisance.

Please don’t trouble.

All over now.

When she’d shaken out her jacket

One flew a spiral

And died in the fire

Its wings by then had…

…caked away, he somehow thinks

As a butterfly’s broken will do

The scales, would it be the scales

He could ask and she would tell

He wants to leave Miss Harvey…any house that holds her

At this moment, and not hate her

For scintillating so

‘It’s me,’ she says, ‘It’s me, being here. They know.’

 

De Clieux, pushing currents against the thickness

Tells himself it’s air we blunder through

Air is not nothing

We breathe lethargy and move like swimmers

This countryside this moment pulling down the clouds

Strikes him thus, as lightning might

Our eyes can’t see, but it will burst its bounds

He had wanted an aimless walk alone

He asks his friend, who has trailed behind

To prow away the silence with chatter

Explain what it was about the chapel

 

The false St. Crispin’s

‘Well, you know. We have records to the twelfth century.

So it had been assumed there was only one. Of course, that would be

typically the way…fire, or invasion, or plague, would

rend to ruin, make abandoned, the old edifice

They would rebuild on the same spot.

De Clieux, if you’ll climb with me to the top

Of Wisham’s Hill, we’ll arrive just at dusk

I believe it’s safe.’

 

 

 

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As Lightning Might

Dougal Inskip’s Lonely Vigil: Seventh Tattersby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2017, Stephanie Foster)