can smell the woodsmoke lingering in your hair
(excerpt from a letter to T)
blessed with a fairly outdoorsy childhood… well, mostly all the nature that a suburban surrey can provide… beautiful woods, trees galore and a friends father’s farm to roam across
(where does the apostrophe belong in that phrase?! plonked like a wind blown speck of confetti)
one summer we tried to be bare foot every single day, just so our toes could grow far apart, we would become cavemen… reading ‘Stig of the Dump’ that year
I remember being age 11 or so, in Mosset, a small idyllic stone village, tucked away in a valley, high in the French Pyrenees
a long straight stick, size of a boy, it’s bark is a bright russet, lets call the wood cherry
a classic French Knife, Choix Opinel, wooden handle, a blade that arches back then open, silver grey, stern of stainless steel
whittle the end of my stick to a sharp precise point… pensively testing against fingertip
my younger brother and I set off on a hunting trip up the river
a fast flowing mountain stream, it’s bed rubble-d with boulders, festooned by smaller stones
water babbles, weave and turbulence, here bouncing, splashing high over a rock
then serpentine sucking back downwards, a ribboned plume of rainbows
alder and goat willow jostle on the banks
light is dappled, brown, speckled… with here… then there… the patter smattering of sparkles upon water
clear, euphoric
slicked back brown hair, I am changeling, otter sleek… creature of water, of land… flow state, merged within the stream
we wade upstream, else hop from rock to rock
amidst the bright chaos, there, backside, around the eddy of a large rock, lies a small still pool
eyes searching the depths for the stillness, the lolling calm of a fish
I stand there, spear in arm drawn back over my head
poise, stasis
slither of a flint flake of memory, to be held, here, forever
