Icklingham RNR
The Dressing Table
Fitz’s Day
Icklingham RNR Along the top of the sign in bold fashion strides the word: “PROTECTED”. I look at it with different eyes since I was asked to stand up and be counted, so to speak. Now, even an unofficial officer in Roadside Nature Reserve can give her morning walk a little more purpose, an extra jut to the chin, between bending at intervals to examine a flower jacket, check over a grass plume, trying to memorise faces and names. Later I take time to sit on the Scots Pine stump, the dog resting like a veteran primed more for recharge than charge. Sotto voce winds stir these Breckland battalions parading un-mown 'til September, and fritillaries weave their brown scraps of ribbon through the foxtails and dogs' tails, the cocks' feet and fescue. It is getting hotter; a white feather floats down from somewhere above; the little bunch of vari-coloured alfalfa wilts cream, yellow, purple in my left hand... I realise the shade is less than it used to be half a decade ago and the dog shifts position. But it is good there are new recruits to the other verge: pine again but also hawthorn, maple and birch, to hold the road line when these old soldiers fail. I look down - at a yellow spider small and global, casting his line and zip wiring forward until he reaches my salmon coloured jeans, then retreating again as he calculates danger and zero reward. I look up - the first red and black cinnabar of the summer zigzags past; a bee cuts across bent on nectar and a bi-plane of burnt sienna moth lands on my wrist to black eye me for bright seconds before moving on, harmless and unharmed... I look around - then marvel at the lack of wheel ruts, craters, fall-out and explosions, fighters, flee-ers, guns and carnage and I flare to send out this bounty as food parcels, this tranquillity as fire blankets, this innocence as healing, to conflagrations elsewhere, everywhere, anywhere... I truly wish I could If I could, I truly would Copyright © 2015 Jenny Chantler
The Dressing Table I opened all my bottles Hoping one might tempt Your almost maiden diffidence But though you looked, Weighed and surveyed them all Pronounced them sad or moving Deep, interesting or strange Not one of all those contents Or their bottles shaped of glass Blue, gold or transparent Bold, resonant or slim Could draw that icy splinter That sits within your heart I feel like wretched Gerda Surrounded by lost art. Copyright © 2008 Jenny Chantler
Fitz's Day I had thought I had no warning of this: When you phoned I felt quite unprepared. So even when you said you had bad news I considered those left from the generation before And was thinking sad, but good innings, thoughts. But then, you told me it was Fitz. Then, dislocation hit me, And all the engines spun and locked and everything went still… I don’t know whether it is better to be left in that sharp way Or after years, as Chris left me. It is strange how death takes the choice out of going - Fitz diving straight in, Chris pushed toe by toe. In life you would have switched the roles But not the leaving of it. I remember now that I had been sad yesterday, Sure that I had lost my bird, The black bird with the white marked wing. Only he turned up this morning, And I think perhaps it had been the sun That had driven him away; Made him too tired even to tout for grapes Or flakes of cheese or cake. But perhaps that strange and sudden gush of tears Had been a form of code, As were the way linked names have hovered recently Both at work and at home, Fitzgerald's mostly, but the prefix still. You told me the clock in your kitchen stopped at eleven minutes past twelve When Fitz died. And I think, not quite the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour, but symbolic Somehow of the conflict he was in, And of the war machinery he worked on, And the record of his father as a soldier, airman and a sailor too. I wheel back further and recall the drive To finally have Gran’s watch repaired last week, And how I looked at Grandpa’s mantel clock just yesterday Thinking it was time to start what had stopped with him, Over 20 years’ ago. And then I hear this day’s date toll its bell And know it’s just a year since those two girls Went missing, never to return as once they were To a village I know too - which served us well. And I am hurled back to the memories of reapers Bent in their grim search beside my route to work. And how the tears of mourners followed ours To fall beneath an Octagon, High under its fenland sky, Hazy in the sun with ash and dissolution… How long am I in stasis? None is here to know, but strangely Coming back, I no longer feel deserted By dreams that braced me during long years in the dark, And less afraid there’ll be no future warnings That spare at least the dead days of reaction. And working through the maze my life starts up again And gives me sight through these few veils between us To what we share and know. And with the sight comes feeling; And with the name comes understanding; And fear of the dark nameless becomes the lesser pain of known And I can cry at last, for Fitz alone. Copyright © 2008 Jenny Chantler