Alexander Jones
Without a noise her steps fall softly, bound
To drive the damp from skin, as heels alight
To chart a fluid dance across the fen;
Though more than dew would wet the dancer’s feet —
If fields could speak, each footstep would recount
Ill-fated few who lay upon the blades,
And sabatons’ engravings in the grass;
Now men or beasts have taken them away,
But still the ground has yet to drink its fill.
As whispers spill in wind across a loch,
Whose glassy face feels nothing of their touch,
A retinue converges on their lead
In moonlight, to reflect the maenad’s gait;
Untarnished linen, trailing wraith-like forms
Who as supernal Psyche rushing out
Of corpus lately fallen flee from view,
Eclipses Memory’s mark upon the moor;
A cleansing tide to sweep away its grief.
Processional recedes; in night obscured
The mire seems as still as any vale.
With daylight this mirage will surely break,
When life returns to tread on fallow ground
Whose gaping mouths were fed vermilion;
Yet understanding passes, found anew,
Between the wild Earth and shining eyes
Who traced a dryad’s dance with pensive steps
As cloths to wipe the blood from Gaia’s chin.