Edwytha’s Plait: Eighth Tattersby
The Folly
Tattersby
Edwytha’s Plait
Terror, when it comes, warms the night
Fallen close and hard of breath
like a parachute’s muffling silk and chill
Night
Borne opaque the face of pity
Mirrored in the watcher’s eye
The plain below
Sinking to the cataract
Emerging hidden under rock
Mimicking Edwytha’s plait
The waters keen
And he has never known this name
For since the Celtic daughter’s hour
They have not called it so
They throng
Crania lift hollow sockets, smile
Sadly aware
They are death’s heads void of nuance
Smile of all the world’s news
A rational man, de Clieux tells his companion
Would call this fog
Have you really left your bed to join me?
Miss Harvey says, for this time
That was my great disappointment…it has been.
So many, but Edwytha does not come
When the sun was high yet, before the warning clouds
Before the settling mists had veiled her iron locks
You’d seen her forged there, giantess laid low
Long ribboned tresses bound in woven stone
Edwytha’s resting place, our spirit home
I, monsieur, too much a goddess from the cradle
Not to dream of honour, how I’d fly
The day I’d won a guardian’s grave
And mounted to the sky
The council first resolved
To bargain with our poverty of gold
Yea, this, we give in tribute, Romans!
All we have
My brothers, each with ceremony draws the silver brooch
From his cloak, and from his hair
Ceremony
That for this solemnity our enemy suppose
We yield before their potent Jupiter
We bury our own
Tattersby
Not Wanted Here: Ninth Tattersby
(2017, Stephanie Foster)