I have spoken of the past, the lady in the long grass . . .

I have spoken of the past, I have spoken of her, the lady in the long grass, the lady beneath the tree. That is a different story but it is the same life. Or perhaps it is the same life but a different story. It depends where you look. Where are you looking?

I am looking inside myself trying to untangle the wool. She has ran away from me, my ball. Remember Alice. Remember her naughty kitten? Feelings you might say but that is easy to say. Feelings woven in and out of here and there, the kitten’s skipping tail weaving past and present and the pending future around my leg, my arm, my tale. A soft warm ball passing over me.

You can never anticipate so you should not dread. Pond Man does not dread but he remembers how he left her behind. She was lying out softly when he came upon her, stealing her way through the mists; but in truth she lay still beneath the elm-green topiary; her rim, her shoreline, the edge of the hedge keeping her from the rest of time, from existence.

The rake lying out in the grass, the rake with the iron prongs pointing towards the future. Pond Man left her there, the rake, the lady in the grass, the past, the glassy surface on which the glinting rays rest their green points flashing upon her pond. She did not owe him anything, because time will move on further towards the future, her arms outstretched, the lady lying still — and Pond Man picks up the rake and carries it away. No, that is not true; that is not what happened.

Pond Man has moved on, he has returned to his abode — the harbour, the lighthouse, the seagulls with their large beaks pecking at the scraps sitting on his hazel fence, his flint wall, their beaks yielding to the turn in the weather — and now this is his setting, this story upon the shore. And there is time outstretched, the sundial upon the lawn pointing noon wards, the still lady.

Autumn has been and gone and the rake is covered in leaves. Forgotten. The lady has forgotten him. Dorothy was her name and she did not love him ‘though she felt she did. She felt for him as she felt for herself, as she felt for her lost child, her husband, as her husband felt for her. Pond Man, but a remnant of feeling like the rake that scooped it all up — her love, her loss, her past — but he was not the right implement because a rake cannot hold much and even the leaves escape him. Everything runs through.

Dorothy ran through him like water through grass on a rainy day when the rain is pelting and falling down the grassy bank along the side of the house where in March the daffodils spring. Pond Man remembers the tilt of the bank and where he planted his boots to hold himself up as he planted out the bulbs while the leaves were turning.

Everything has turned. The earth has tilted since Pond Man was standing on that grassy bank with the force of gravity holding him down. He has turned away, she has turned away and this is another story.