vii: Nine Arches Press presents...
Isobel Dixon Self-Portrait in Sweet Woodruff Tumbled in fractious, scratchy grief, let me lie in the undergrowth, feel sorrow pass from me into the earth. Hold, receiving soil, and give – my aching shoulder, this eroding spine, the bruiséd cage in which these organs heave. I don’t know how or why they carry on, except they do, and bear the weight of me with them. Two roads diverged, and I lay down, for what else could I do. Sink to my knees and stretch out long, heart-tattered, in a lap of salving green. Let braver travellers venture on. Let me succumb and dream among the leaves as if I were a child again and no-one there to call me in. I saw a painting once like this, of ink on silk: damp emerald, a shaded world. The trees rise silently, and a skein of weasel threads the whitestarred forest floor: a weasel paused among fishmint, wild strawberries. This is that pause. A forest bath, soul-tunnelling. A time to sleep among the beetles in a cloak of rain and fragrant asterids and wake, May-dazed, to a softer path. An apple-green music, pale vanilla light, a cup of stem-steeped early summer wine.
38
