We brought our own sheets on that holiday.
Red, with a touch of pink.
The owner of the house had asked for it.
This was the place where The Romantic Poets
had once lived . They’d walked the wilds
in Cumbria…and…with each pounding foot of ours
I thought of this…
We ate our seasonal strawberries in a field,
beside a muddy little stream where beetles swam.
Not a daffodil to be seen…for spring was gone…
And it was summer now.
Then I set off alone awhile …in hapless reverie.
I willed that some romantic melancholy
from Poets of the Past, might seep into me.
I wished to feel heroic in my tragedy.
And so I strode in tangled growth…
A cheerless heroine with wind in hair,
My pale cheeks lighting up
With strange imaginings..
I was that heroine…the Lady of Shallot,
Fleeing the stony tower, lashing through the fields,
The barley and the rye..
Towards the end of Time where land meets sky.
That evening I was levelled by an allergy.
The strawberries lacked mercy in their strategy,
attacking both my blood and skin,
Tormenting me.
We brought our own sheets on that holiday.
Red, with a touch of pink.
The owner of the house had asked for it.
Kristine Byrne..17th Nov. 2018