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Geraldine Monk |
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ORANTE FLIES HOME LUNE
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ORANTE FLIES HOME My psychic exoskeleton was in turmoil. The inner-sea crashing madly for home. Worn out with prickly heat and lights in harbour caught fast in the faraway, the heart taps a doleful rhythm against its cage. Vision fails. My eye changes shape and swarms with Optrex. Back home I unpack the wailing bubble wrap. The content emerges like a ship's anchor. Arms aloft. Head locked. Cast iron stare. A tattooed beard on her chin. She has turned truculent under the weight of northern skies. She is still chanting: ...Invisible things. Seeking concrete things. Seeking abstract things. Uncertain things. Deceptive things. Things wearing out. Existence of things. Killing animal things. Things passing away. Things stuck together. All things being possible things. Things happening. Things not remotely. Crazed orbits of things... Hers is the day. Hers is the night. I place her gently on a shelf with Others. The sun knows the place of its setting. |
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LUNE (For my great-great grandfather Christopher Reed) The slippage was between rivers and time. Driving through the undulations of the Trough of Bowland a preternatural light skulked withershins. The Bay beyond redemption came into view on our left. The Faraway mumbling...oh never mind. Veering inland to Arkholme the old family farm still there. Still a farm. Fields so familiar they crashed my DNA. It seriously wasn’t ours anymore. We built it in 1709. Lost a century later. Blame laws against women. Mortality. The draw of short straws. Taking the road down to the river we stall outside Ferryman’s Cottage from where my ancestors departed. Their last earthly journey was to sail across this river. Rowed in rustic coffins across the Lune to Melling. Obolus dead weights ballast their eyes. Winding sheets. Paddled to the last by Keen-gaze. Death carrier. Tom Charon. That day the river was brackish in parts. Abstruse. A slick so dense a black it sucked all light from your eyes. Drank your breath out. Oil of extreme unction. Oesophagus. Sarcophagus. Loyn. River of Pain. River of Wailing. River of Forgetfulness. River of Flaming. River of Detestation. Five rivers of death. Five tidal bores. River of Homecoming. On a sandbank I almost see someone tragic with a crooked nose and a missing finger. He crashes my DNA. Was this the sandbank we owned? Could this be...oh never mind. |
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