alchemy

So dreams merge with fact and stories twist and multiply .

From copper to silver to gold .

But still the birds taunt-haunt me. In barely dawn I awake and hear their pale notes just beginning.

The window is open , like it always is, I need that air-gap , just in case . Even as a child I insisted the window was left a fingers width open . So the house could breathe, I said, but quietly , inside , I felt it was to let things in . Under heavy blankets with my worlds , those strange imaginings would come quickly , and , more importantly , I felt I could fly out. Because I did so want to believe in fairies.

Where the grass was thick and wet at the bottom of the garden , amongst the sweet-rot smell of dead leaves there were tiny worlds, I knew them to be there, I just had to look the right way.

And so, last night.

Under lighter blankets with a heavier mind, as the birds started too early , I awoke with darker dreams.

I’d been walking the fields in shorts and legs bare. An exhilarating feeling of climbing , up and up. A rope ladder journey with no visible end and no definite aim. Tall drystone walls barrack the fields around here, some mended , some broken. The one I stumbled over was broken-bowed : wet-dark slick with sponge mossed cushions. I finger gripped and scrabbled. But my hold was precarious, my pumps slipped and my fingers blindly tore.

The falling was inevitable .

Backwards , arms pushed crucifix taut and real terror in the darkness of dreamsleep.

The fall was surreal.

My feet planted into thick earth, legs pressed together as stones gathered about me. Scraping, shin-skin in silver slivers . Slicing and pinning me with their wet cold weight. Up to my thighs, held like a scarecrow, a darkly comical Zebedee. I grappled to free myself, pulling at old stone, lichen slipping and staining , putting hurt fingers to bruised mouth and tasting dirt. Grit slime dankness sinking into a mouth trying to form the right words, as tears burned.

The grainy morning light was a relief. And now the sun burns hotter still. I am escaping to the sea. I hope the waves will cleanse me , I hope I find, and give, some solice .

Solve et Coagula .