Our house is tall. Bedrooms tuck in corners off a curving staircase up three floors.
When you come striding along the station platform I hug you and grab your backpack to carry. We’ve been living in different countries for too long.
We sleep, work on a huge jig-saw puzzle, you make a chocolate cake. We talk and talk.
One night at bedtime you come into my room, eyes shining,
‘Mum, do you want to have a sleepover in my room tonight? I’ve made up the other bed for you.’
I go up the next flight of stairs. In the room, lamplight, two little red-covered beds turned back, the window curtain fluttering.
Without thinking, I refuse.
Still the knife of memory twists in me.
after midnight
owl’s cry
light at six
last night’s sunset
a blessing
otters at play
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Just as pleasing and moving now as in the class. Have you revised it a bit? I’m traveling and don’t have the papers from the class with me to compare.
Thank you —
You have a wonderful memory. That was a while ago now. I have cut it a bit, for the better I think. Don’t you find it always works like this?
I wonder how Allegra is now, sigh…
Very poetic in thought, Gert.
Leslie
I remember lying in my bed, hearing the night noises and feeling happy for all the time we’d had together in that funny tall house.
Hi — sorry to not respond sooner. Traveling in the Midwest. I was corresponding with Mark at writers.com earlier in the summer, and he said that he’d had some tenuous contact with Allegra. He held out a slim hope that she might teach again and I said that he could count on me as a student. You too, sounds like. Did I already say this? Thanks — yours in the seventeen syllable life —
I will be there in a flash if she ever returns. She is inspiring and such an acute reader.But we must plod on without her for now.
We must. Glad to have companions in the trek.
Is there a date for your new book yet?
October or November this year. You will be pleased to know we have made use of our Old Norse studies for some aspects of this book.
Can’t wait!
Dear M glad you don’t hold it against me.That time does linger in the memory. Remember the oysters!