Where were cherries and berries
As thick as might be seen...
Mummers paid Ellen a call, accompanied by a dancing jester wearing furs. By now it was snowing and the storm sprinkled the jester and the costumes of the torchlit merrymakers with him, as they trailed about, singing. A glass of wine with Ellen... Egypt, it seemed an easy dive to the bottom of the deep, to pluck drowned honor, but there was Ann, pinch-faced, wanting to scourge, and sting with pismires.
Joseph and Mary walked through their orchard bewitched, and Ellen’s thick tree burned with its candles; the Yule log burned and cat-spat; thick-eyed musing came with scalding wassail; then more dancing and then sleep at their side... Later, I’ll tell her about my play, my plans, secrets of the stage, boyhood delights... I’ll reveal the wildness of the world, and beyond this, the tranquility of poetry itself.
She’ll share her Edinburgh, her theatre, her books, her home by the lake, her work for the priory library.
She told me:
“Life is to hold warmly in our hands. It is to be made better for our passing.”
Her intense face considered mine: the fine lines of her mouth, those eyes, lochs, and then there were her dark, dark hair, her perfume, the pressing of her fingers into my sex...necessities and no better...
Carols continued while snow stuck to her window panes and the pine boughs put resin on the air...a day and then another, her hair on her pillow like a fern...and nothing else was needed.
On the blue frozen Thames