As Lightning Might: Sixth Tattersby
The Folly
Tattersby
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.’
As Lightning Might
Dougal Inskip’s Lonely Vigil: Seventh Tattersby
(2017, Stephanie Foster)