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The first one I remember was ‘stipendiary’ — in flooded roast beef, the puddings of Pudding Lane, hurled pies and for some reason the rhythm of a bicycle pump filling a tyre.
The next day ‘pip’ led to “For God’s sake get a grip Pippa!” shouted across a cold morning lake — a brown lake with various dark, litter filled side ponds and a terrier yapping frantically on the bank.
Then came ‘moist’: delivered after considerable hesitation. Uncertainty was unusual. On Monday he was absent: a vacant chair, drawers emptied, desk top cleared — all we were left with was Friday’s ‘moist’.
As the week crawled on we tried ‘crumpling’, ‘crutch’ and, the last I remember, ‘vulpine’ but the magic was gone. Another took his chair. Sucked boiled sweets. Spoke with a lisp.
Not a quack , gabble or mutter as the six thread through chaos.
The mountains seem to be liquefying this damp and blustered morning,
the sky is hesitant and lacks confidence — so the geese are a certainty in what is shapeless.
They waddle, chittering in concentration — their foolish feet, their pert rears
an order in the hopeless tumble of junk mathematics around them.
Sky deepening velvet and the mysterious seven appear to throw their wild claim across these shadowy mountains involved, as they are, in Transylvanian gestures.
Through mid-ground flares of side-lit barley and dim cactus candelabras, the concepts flicker. Each contains a shuffle of convolutions far from the hushed libraries — the domey bibliophiles.
Wishing and washing the air, they are a tide glittering out there away from this moony hammock and its Baskerville thoughts.
No-one’s in charge — (save the threaded power cables) — a sax pecks and bites, then snuffles before serious research that ends in a scramble or one could say mélange,
a free-line romp along the ridge line — then babble from the rabble before the whole jingling entity gropes its way towards druggy madrugada.
Odd chirrup. Deep vibrato — the dancing seven recede and recede so its back to the back-cover blurb, and re-savouring the tangy resonance of the closing chapter.
and published in the Festival anthology
The Basilica on the convent island of San Giulio near the lakeside town of Orta in Northern Italy is a favourite site for wedding photographs.
In the late afternoon the island loosened moorings and drifted towards the town. The approach was silent and hardly noticed until waters became turbulent
and the quays met in a long grinding kiss. Boardwalks splintered and cracked but not before the brides and their entourages had disembarked.
The convent doors stayed closed. This service rendered, the island moved slowly back as clouds mottled sunlight on the lakeside mountains.
All was calm. Townspeople gathered open mouthed and heard from over the water, on a gentle breeze, choiring voices from the nuns. A sweet imploring chant
as with scarce a shudder the island began to rise. There was a basal rending of rock, the campanali tolled and with unwavering force San Giulio lifted free of the lake,
water streaming from the rising banks where motor boats dangled like tiny pendants until one by one their painters broke and they fell with other debris.
The lake erupted with splashes like a white blossom as the island moved steadily towards the sky its shadow crossing San Mauricio and Santuario del Sasso.
When it entered the first wisps of cumulus, the stacked clouds above opened outspread arms and the island was engulfed. All became a swirl of vapour.
The onlookers stared upwards and at the now visible far shore. There were a few remnant splatters in the vacant water then just bird song above and around the weeping brides.
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