I recently posted a request for a few days in a hut in the wild for a bit of time away. My very good friends and connections have given me leads which I hope will lead to days away soon, on Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor, and more locally at Prussia cove.
I’ve three books on the go at the moment, and I feel some time to take a high view over them would be good.
Here is an excerpt from my writing entitled ‘Love Letters.’
At the ends of your rounded fingertips there are creases, or little seams (I might ask, if I were sunshine, may I sit beside you with tiny snippers , and open up the seams? Will you tell me your secrets?)
Your fingers grow daily in the garden, their blunt ends emerge brown and pink from the dark soil. I watch them morning and evening. I drop onto my knees, onto the grass, then onto my palms, spread on the damp green, so I can watch you emerge. Each day you grow a little more.
As you reach upwards towards the sky the seam along the end of your finger opens, revealing gatherings of further petal-y finger-buds which become pink as they open. I smell the grass, I smell the earth, I can smell the bones of creatures asleep, fading, some hand-spans down beneath me. Bees come. The stems of your fingers grow longer and thicker. The buds swell and the flowers emerge, one after another. You are broad, luscious, soft. The skin of your petals, some cloud seme – cloud seed – a breath of semen, a seed gathering, falling upwards into my lap. I see you swirling in the space between us, all the tiny hanging be-skirted seeds, looking for this palm – or that one – to land upon, to nestle into, to set up home. The seeds are all the words I say; they fill my mouth, they land here after floating for so many cold seasons; the currents of your breath dispel them over my body before they gather and spill softly around my belly.
The entrance point: my umbilicus – the golden cord goes through here, little hands follow each other through the door.
Your petals stroke my legs as I stand near you. I think to be an animal, and I stand over all of you, this forest of hands growing in my garden. Your petals stroke my belly, and my thighs. I can be the sky for a while, you will be my earth. You are the man in the garden with the broad chest of dark fronds I would lie on in joy, moving snake-like; or wriggling like an infant, sucking drops of moisture from the ends of all your stems.