Downloadable PDF: Chapter 5
A spider flits across the paving and the mud as I glance groundward as we move along, lifting my gaze back up and on the people.
There’s one with a stride, in anger;
there’s one with a well-kept waddle;
there’s one with purpose paramount;
there’s one with a limp and hobble.
There’s one with a basket – woven,
held against a dirt-white apron;
there’s one with a soft hat – ribboned-
straw – on a head of auburn hair.
There’s one with ragged trousers on;
there’s one with a red, ragged shirt;
there’s one with light blue, one with green:
both dresses, with the ground they flirt.
There’s one with cloth-sack hoisted up
across the blades of hunched shoulders;
there’s one who, with another, loads
barrels onto a wheeled cart.
A bridle and its breath come close as she pulls me to the side and turns me. She is flowing with the others in a way that I am not and she’s pulled me round to look upon a broad, green hill, much higher than the towers re-ascendant. There are clouds, in flux from grey to white, in the blue that the grassed hill climbs into, some walls of stone and little paths mark it, near the trees, for settlement.
william altoft 