prose | Marie Marshall

Axe

All the girls call me ‘Axe’. Tough name, but nah need fe aks me why, coz of me accent, ell-oh-ell!

They’re like to me – We were gonnay give you a kicking. Two days I’ve been in Glasgow, two days! I go out to a club, and these girls come over and they’re looking mean like they mean business, right. But the music is loud and the girl who’s doing all the talking has this accent, this Scottish accent, and she’s shouting over the music, and I’m like – What? What? And she’s back to me like – What? What? And then the music stops and all you can hear is her shouting what and me shouting what, and suddenly everyone’s laughing.

So the girl who’s doing all the talking, this is her to me – Come over to our table. And I’m like – Okay, cool. So we all get to be mates, and we’re laughing, and I can’t understand half of what they’re saying. I can now, though, later. I’m used to their accent, they’re used to mine though this is one of them to me back then – Oh. My. God. Your accent is weird!

Afterwards some of them are hammered and throwing up in the street, and we’re helping them. And she, this girl who was doing all the talking, she’s like – My name’s Marie, what’s yours? Only the way she says Marie is all Scottish like MAH-ri. And I’m like – I’m Shayla. And she’s like – you wernay scared when we came up to you, Shayla, we were gonnay give you a kicking, you didn’t back down. So I’m like – Why was you going to give me a kicking anyway? And she’s like – It was the way you were looking, looking at the lads in here, looking at us, just the way you were looking.

And she slips her arm through mine and we walk off down the street, and she’s like – Woot! That’s when we’re dodging round one of the other girls who’s not walking straight coz she’s hammered.

Then this is Marie to me when we’re walking down the street – Can you fight? Wannay be in the krew? This is me back to her – Yeah, all right.

So we’re The Gherls. The Gherls, right? They explain it to me once, it’s coz the krew started with, like, Celtic supporters’ girlfriends, and Celtic are called The Bhoys, yeah? But we’re not strictly Celtic supporters or Celtic supporters’ girlfriends any more, not Catholics. Well, Rosary is Catholic. We call her Rosary coz she gets her beads out before a fight, and like counts them with her thumb, then she puts them away and crosses herself. But Shireen is in our krew, and she’s a Muslim and Asian, and she wears a hijab thing and doesn’t drink, and it doesn’t matter even when we’re fighting Asian girls, so just the same it doesn’t matter to me if we’re fighting black girls. It’s the fighting that matters.

There’s ten of us hardcore, and there’s the also-rans, like girls who sometimes are there or girls we can call on, and some of those girls have mates who are okay and will help out. But like most of the time we don’t need them. The hardcore krew got loyalty.

And one day Marie’s like to me – How old are you? And I’m like – Why you aks me that? And she’s like – Axe? Axe? Ell-em-ay-oh, that’s what we’ll call you, your name is Axe. And I’m like – Laughing. My. Effing. Arse. Off.

When you’re fighting, like when I’m fighting, everything is so clear. Lights get really bright and white, and everything like stands out with this hard, black outline, and I feel really alive. I mean really alive, like my whole body is tingling and I can feel everything, and even when I get hurt it’s like the feeling takes over. It’s not like getting hurt normally. It’s different, better. I know that sounds weird, but I know what I mean.

There’s this girl, this Gherl, called Paysh, that’s like short for Patience which is her name, right. She’s cool, really quiet, never says nothing, never says nothing much. When she fights it’s like her fists go really tiny, and when they hit someone they must really hurt. I saw her once, and she’s really fast, and she’s fighting this other girl, and this other girl’s going down coz Paysh punches her in the face three times. Just like that, it took half a second. Bang bang bang. And these big red marks come on the girls face, and the rest of her face is pure white, and she looks like she’s going to cry. So all her mates are coming over like they want to kill Paysh, so we go and stand round Paysh and dare them, and they all back off.

And I’m like – that was sick, Paysh, really sick!

And the rest of The Gherls are like – yeah that was totally sick! And they’re all grinning.

And Paysh is suddenly all excited, and she’s like – Yeah it was sick, fuck yeah, did you see her face? And she’s making those tiny little fists. So anyway one day we’re in this bar, and I’m like – Where’s Paysh? And the others are like – She’s got her finals tomorrow, so she’s studying. And I’m like – What, no, Paysh is a fucking student?

And then the week after that I’m with Paysh shopping, and we go to Marks and Spencer’s café for a coffee, and this is me to her – Paysh, you’re really clever, so why’re you in a krew? Why’re you not, like, at the student union or something?

And she’s very quiet for a while, like she always is. She’s sitting there and I’m thinking how slim she is, and how she looks tall even when she’s sitting down, and how she always wears green but not bright green, not Celtic green, but sort of faded green, and how her hair is somewhere between blonde and red.

And then this is her to me – I don’t know, Axe. It’s as though when I’m at uni I’m on an island, or I’m behind bars, or I’m in a room with no windows full of mirrors. No one can see out. No one takes any notice of anything except what’s going on inside. No one sees that there’s a whole city outside of the uni. Yeah, it’s like I’m on an island and I want to see fish, but I can’t see fish unless I jump into the ocean, unless I make a conscious decision to jump into the ocean and swim and look for fish. So let’s take something simple: if I want a drink and a dance I go into the city, and there’s a club. If I want mates I go into the city, and there’s my krew. Some students if they want to do something dangerous and exciting they climb the big uni spire. When I want to do something and dangerous I get into fights with my krew. Do you understand, Axe?

And I nod, like I kind of understand. Then this is me to her – Yeah, I think so, it’s like when I’m at work it’s all brown and green, but when I’m out with The Gherls its bright yellow and bright blue, and when we’re fighting it’s brilliant white and there’s like wind-chimes going off in me head.

And she’s like – Synaesthesia. And I’m like – What? Whatever. Then we’re smiling at each other.

So one time I’m in our usual club and I’m fixing me makeup in the ladies, and Marie is standing next to me washing her hands. I’m sort of looking at her sideways and comparing her to Paysh coz they both have the same colour hair. But she’s shorter and like wider across the shoulders and hips, and she’s a little bit butch maybe, though not really stone just a little bit. And she’s taking a long time just washing her hands, and she looks over to me.

And she’s like – I really like you, Axe.

And I’m like – I really like you too, MAH-ri.

So then she leans over and kisses me right on the mouth, and her mouth is sort of nice so I kiss her back. Then we stop, and she’s like – Sick, or what? She’s grinning and I’m grinning too, and I’m like – Yeah, sick! And then we go back into the club to our mates.

Then there’s the time I see Rosary in the distance and I follow her, and she goes down streets I don’t know, where I’ve never been, and there’s this big Catholic church all brick and concrete, and she goes in. So I follow her, and there she is sitting in one of those long seats they have, and I go and sit next to her. She’s praying or something coz her eyes are closed and her hands are together and those beads of hers are between her hands. Her lips are moving but she’s not saying nothing. Then it’s like she realises I’m there or she finishes praying, coz she opens her eyes and crosses herself.

And I’m like – Hi! And she’s like – Hi. What are you doing here? And I’m like – I followed you. What are you doing? It’s not Sunday or nothing. And she’s like – I’m going to confession. And I’m like – What’s that? Coz I don’t know nothing about being Catholic.

And she’s like – I go into that box there, and there’s a priest in the other box, the one right next to it, and we cannay see each other but we can hear each other, and I tell him all the bad things I’ve done since the last time I was here. And he makes me promise no to do them again, and he forgives me like in God’s name, and tells me to go and say a bunchay Hail Marys or something as a penance.

So I think for a while, and then I’m like – Do you tell him about the krew and all the fights? And she’s like – Yeah of course.

So then there’s a creak and the door of the box opens and an old woman comes out and walks back through the church. Then Rosary gets up and goes into the box and closes the door behind her, and I suppose she’s telling the priest all about the things she’s done, and it makes me feel a bit weird because I’m sitting there and I’ve been part of the things she’s telling him. And I wonder what I would tell a priest if I was Catholic.

Then there’s this one big fight. There’s been another krew hanging out in the places we like to hang out, the mates of the girl Paysh punched. They’re like to everybody – we like it here, we’re gonnay keep coming here. So we’ve put the word round, Marie’s put the word round, that if they’re there on Friday then they are gonnay get a kicking. So on Friday there they are, and there’s more of them than before, and they’re really loud, they think they are so cool and tough. And Marie goes over to them and she’s like – Outside, round the back, ten minutes. And they’re like – Fuck you Missis Woman, but yeah.

So ten minutes later we’re all in the wynd and we’re thinking like – Where are they? Then we see them coming in at both ends of the wynd, and they’re grinning because they think they’ve got us trapped. And some of them are picking up stuff from the wynd, like sticks and stuff, and someone’s like – Watch out, that blonde hoor’s got a malky.

And Marie’s like – It makes me MAD when someone pulls a malky on me! Then we’re fighting our way out and they can’t keep us in, and Rosary’s up against some girl with a piece of wood, and I’m up against the girl with the malky, it’s a Stanley knife or a box-cutter or something and she cuts me across the face with it. And everything is brilliant white like camera flashes and ringing like bells in me head, and it’s like everyone is dancing and I’m breathing really fast. And I’m hitting the malky girl and she’s running and they’re all running, and we’re like – Woot!

Except Rosary is bent over with her hand on her knees and then she falls over, and someone’s like – She got hit over the head, someone with a piece of wood or something. And I’m like – Look, everyone, get out of here and I’ll stay with her. I’ll call an ambulance on me mobile, it’ll be all right, I’ll say we was mugged or something. Move! Get out of here! Before someone gets the coppers. Move!

So the ambulance comes and takes us to hospital, and Rosary is lying there with a blanket over her and a mask on her face, and I’m like – Rosary! Rosary! And the paramedics are seeing to me because of me cut face and they’re like – Look, keep still, you’re arm’s cut too. And me sleeve’s all wet and dark as they cut it away.

Then we’re at the hospital and there’s a woman doctor puts stitches in me face and me arm, and she’s like – We’ll keep you in overnight. And I’m like – Okay Miss, whatever, but can I have a bed next to me mate? And she’s like – I’ll see what I can do.

And the police are there and they want to talk to me, but I don’t tell them nothing, and I’m just like – We was mugged. We was jumped on. No I didn’t see who it was. It was dark. And they’re like – All right but we might want to talk to you again. And I can see they’re thinking, like – Black girl, black girl, blacks always equals trouble.

So then I’m sitting on this bed and Rosary is on the bed next to me with one of those drip things in her arm and bandages on her head where she got hit, and we’re talking to each other really quiet, and I’m like – You did really good, Rosary, at the fight, and you’ll be all right now the doctor’s seen you. And she’s like – You did really good too, Axe, and I’m glad you’re here. And then her voice goes even quieter, and she’s like – Hail Mary, full of grace. And it’s like she’s counting with her thumb but there’s nothing there, and suddenly her eyes roll and she starts to shake, and I’m like – Nurse! Miss! Miss!

Then there’s people running and pulling the curtains round her bed, and that’s Rosary dying, and I’m crying and I’m like – Rosary! Rosary! And there’s two nurses trying to make me be quiet, but I’m crying and I’m like – Rosary! Rosary!

So that’s when things go brown and green for me again, and the stitches in my arm and my face began to hurt, and Rosary dies and I never get to talk to her again, never get to tell her how great she is.

So we’re all standing round Rosary’s grave, The Gherls are here, and Rosary’s family that I’ve never met before, and there’s a priest and he’s like – And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. And he calls Rosary Christine McCluskey, because that was her name and I never knew it. I never heard it before. And Shireen isn’t there, she’s standing over by the path coz she can’t be at a Christian burial. So I walk over to her and I put my arm through hers, and Marie turns round and frowns, but I give her a sort of secret wave to let her know it’s all right, and she turns back again.

And this is Shireen to me – I really liked Rosary, I really liked her. And this is me back to Shireen – I really liked her too, we all did. And Shireen doesn’t know what else to say, so she’s like – La ilaha illallah, Muhammad rasulu-llah. And I don’t know what else to say either, so I’m like – Amen.

I’m standing there thinking the priest at Rosary’s church isn’t going to hear any more about us, about me. Now I won’t be in nobody’s confession.

And afterwards when Rosary’s parents have all gone, Marie’s like – No time to waste, we’re dressed in our best all in black, we are gonnay go and find the wee skank with the plank and we’re gonnay do to her what she did to Rosary, and we’re gonnay find the wee hoor who cut Axe with the malky, and we’re gonnay … we’re gonnay… something… like if they can pick up sticks we can pick up bricks.

And we’re all like – Yeah let’s fucking do it.

So we’re walking along in our best all in black, and inside me head there’s this rhyme, and inside I’m like – One two I love you, three four out the door, five six pick up bricks. And I’m looking at Marie and she’s looking back at me, and she’s like – This one’s for Rosary! And it’s cold and me teeth are chattering, and there’s bells in me head, and I’m angry but I’m smiling, and it’s all brilliant white, shining light, and I’m really alive again. Really, really alive.

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May 8, 2012

After the revolution

He had been a capitalist of so great ascent that he had once been called a captain of commerce; now such things were put by, and the jut of his jaw was bravado, belied by the glisten of sweat on his forehead. He was genuinely puzzled when we asked him for his secret dream; having taken a few breaths he said he had always wanted to work with wood, to feel the buzz of the grain against his thumb and the satisfaction of pulling a splinter from his finger when the carpentry was done. We found him a job in a boat yard, the period of his employment was inverse to his aptitude. Eventually he found a niche caring for a girl with Down’s syndrome, who came to call him uncle and to love him. There is no success without attempt; things balance eventually. I have heard that often he expressed something like the guilt of a survivor, which he was until he died of a heart attack; he was found in a water closet, the type that is so small that you have to rest your elbow in the hand-basin and gaze into the mirror. There would have been no pain.

__________

The online literary magazine qarrtsiluni is currently publishing poems in a series themed imitation. The entry for 7^th May is my O great maritime bears, which is an emulation of poet Lisa Jarnot. The theme of imitation continues to the bio note which is an imitation of a telegram by the artist Balthus. From the qarrtsiluni site you can download a podcast of the poem, read by Dani Adomaitis.

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April 9, 2012

Be seen reading a book

Be seen reading a book wherever you go. No, not thumbing a hand-held device, reading an actual book. Be seen to laugh, to smile, to frown; be heard to catch your breath. Take out a pencil and make marginal notes in your own, personal shorthand. Use a bookmark, maybe one main one in stiff card or leather, along with supplementary markers torn from a notepad, maybe a brightly-coloured index tab or two which lead to a favourite or important passage neatly underlined. Take the book everywhere. Let people hear you chuckling and exclaiming even during a comfort break; interrupt your lunchtime apple to read out passages to colleagues; hold your book high whilst sitting on the bus or in the park; when at rest on the summit of a newly-climbed mountain, whip out a paperback from your pocket.

No, this is not an exercise in Luddism. The hand-held device is here to stay. It is an exercise in celebrating what must be the most important technological advance of the past thousand years – print. So much has now been committed to ink on paper. Even though the day of the hand-held device has come, the new literature that has appeared only in a form that can be consumed on such a device is infinitesimal compared to the vast canon of the already-published.

The printer’s boast was always this: that once something is published in print then it cannot be retracted. If you lie then your lie is nailed forever; if you tell the truth it shines forever. A pomposity, maybe, but do the book thing anyway. For me. You know you want to.

And on no account ever refer to it as ‘hard copy’.

__________

I have just finished what I think is my final input into the selection of poems submitted to The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes and am awaiting eagerly a sight of what the final book may look like.

Meanwhile it is time to turn my attention to another possible editing project, this time the work of a single poet. I will keep you posted…

10 Comments

February 15, 2012

Intermetricality: a definition

Intermetricality: the persistence, repetition, or recurrence of rhythms, metres, and patterns, especially unconsciously, especially in folk stories, folk poems, and folk songs. Such patterns may have their origin in non-folk forms, such as the Bible, advertising slogans, and so on, as much as in folk forms. The term intermetricality is akin to intertextuality*, but is more specific.

Off the top of my head, here is a possible modern example. Someone posts a picture of a cat wearing glasses on Facebook, and captions it thus: ‘If you’re under 40 this will remind you of Harry Potter… if you’re over 40 it will remind you of John Lennon’. That particular pattern of balancing two phrases is similar to that found in the Book of Proverbs. This does not necessarily prove a direct relationship between the two but readers will likely be struck by the familiarity of both.

By the way, this word and its definition did not come to me out of nowhere. I coined it to explain something after having been asked to read and comment upon an article by the late Dell Hymes, Ethnopoetics and sociolinguistics: three stories by African-American children, in which he wrote of such repetitions. I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert in this or in any of the academic fields I mention here, I just wanted to establish the coining in a recognisable place and at a recognisable time. Others are now perfectly free to use it.

*The word ‘intertextuality’ was coined by Julia Kristeva, although she herself was probably influenced by the work of semioticians Roland Barthes and Mikhail Bakhtin, and linguist Ferdinand de Saussure

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December 27, 2011

‘A Woman on the Edge’ – workshop project of prose and poetry: Omega.

One day nature will declare my work-in-progress a canon, and there will be an omega stamped, sealed, upon my work. It will be as final as a horseshoe-print on my skull, a line drawn underneath the last word on the last page. The moment before that line is drawn and the Omega is spoken I know that I will be praying to write just one more line, one more metaphor. Perhaps it would have been as apt a metaphor as – life imitating art – was drawn by those foresters who lately cut down some trees in a piece of Perthshire woodland. No doubt in an act of supposed ‘management’ they culled those on which, a couple of months previously, hand-written poems of mine had been pinned, but more than management it seemed like retribution exacted by the landowners for their having participated in an act of revolution. Cruel landowner! Cruel foresters! The trees were innocent bystanders, or at most unwitting insurrectionists!

Still, it made me think.

It knocked clean out of my head my project of hidden poetry, buried under the earth and leaf-mold of the forest floor. In its place was panic at the thought that a day would come when I produced no new poetry, not simply poetry that would remain unseen. How awful a glimpse of mortality!

I shall seed amongst old books some scraps and notes, lines in my hand on the backs of old envelopes, hints of manuscripts completed but undiscovered, so that there will always be speculation as to whether any ‘canon’ is complete, whether there are poems out there new to the reader’s eye. I shall redecorate my house, writing in felt marker upon a wall before I apply paste and paper, so that – perhaps – when they blue-plaque the building with a reverent Marie Marshall, author and poet, lived here it may be treasure-trove. I shall give my man-of-law a box and specify that it is never to be opened.

Such you may consider to be sleight of hand, deception, half-lies, total falsehoods, and finite even if secretly so. I shall bequeath to other poets a phrase each, an idea, some few words, a sentence, a rhythm, a rhyme – something. Along with each bequest will be a plea for them to run with it, weave it in-and-out of the pommiers of their poetic orchard or of the bollards and signposts of their city streets, to mortar it as a reclaimed brick into their own wall. I will release my works to the world and say: If you have a mind to poetry, then lift these, re-mould them, extract text from them, expand the images and metaphors, or simplify them, encapsulate them in seventeen syllables, do anything you wish… but please be sure to acknowledge them!

Perhaps there is an Edgeland between life and death, and this is why we believe in ghosts; perhaps my own dreams – the ones where I can fly, rather as one treads water – are intimations of this state seen through a crack in time and space. If this is so, I might be watching as it all unfolds. I might be the goose that walks over the grave of the reluctant poet – the one who doesn’t pitch in – and makes him shiver. You have been warned.

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December 20, 2011

‘A Woman on the Edge’ – workshop project of prose and poetry, part 6

Templeton Woods

Held in an irregular trapezoid between Dundee and one of its dormitory villages, bordered by a broken road, by the ordered twists and turns and straight-forwards of a golf course, by the rat-run to Coupar Angus, and crowned by a water-tower, is the wood where I walk. I prefer to pick days when I won’t meet anybody, so that in this patch, this scratch of trees on the map, this soledad, I can run and walk alone. I can lose myself, pretend I am in the depths of the antic Caledonian Forest; so I come midweek, maybe in the rain, deliberately to feel the breath knife my lungs and my heartbeat rise to meet it. I feel safe here, there is no denying. Sometimes I feel as though I could pull a blanket of fallen leaves over me and sleep, never to be found, although sometimes felt. I have run here in the dark, bobbing my torch to the fall of my trainers, veering crazily off the path and crashing into branches, and only the cold has held pace with me. I have deliberately stood here waiting for evening to overtake day, for the last sky-metal to turn edge-on to me and withdraw, for the blue-to-black sheath to take its blade, so that I could look up between the trees to see stars, shooting stars, tricks of the light that never came. All this so close to civilisation.

On the 20^th of March 1979, eighteen-year-old Carol Lannen was witnessed getting into a man’s car in Dundee. Some time later her naked body lay here in Templeton Woods; she had been strangled, her clothes were never found but her handbag was discovered miles away in Aberdeenshire. A little short of a year later a shy young woman by the name of Elizabeth McCabe went missing. Rabbit hunters found what they thought was a discarded shop-window dummy lying very close to where Carol Lennan’s body had been found. Neither murder has ever been solved, each remains a cause célèbre, and a torment to those who knew and loved each victim.

And yet I still come here, willing myself to be lost, to be alone. Day after day I cross the trail of other walkers, I find litter, hear a dog barking. Woods like this one right here on the edge of things are debatable places. They ought to be wild yet so much of them is touched daily – we come for solitude, for exercise, maybe for sex, for thought, for stars. Twice, as recorded, to leave the aftershock of pain and terror. Oh God, there are edges and then there are edges.

October 29, 2011

‘A Woman on the Edge’ – Railway poetry

Railway footbridge, Perth.

My careful paces, three to the second, carry me
across the worn, regular plates of the footbridge; a slight give,
spring, a dull noise that dies, and if I pause to look
over the rail into the slack, dark backwater,
the black-to-silver flash of heron-bait fry
flickers against the turvy tree and the negative sky.

I know that by the hedges at the far side of the bridge,
where an old gate leans, black flies will be haze-hanging,
trailing their lazy legs in the air, and that I might be taken
by the sudden ambiguity of a butterfly, resting
on a stoical stone, all red-gold-in-shadow.

Yet to come, but first a one-boy riot of slapping trainers
in a terrified sprint to win the far side before a train comes,
oh the clangour of drowned bells his feet make; be quick, be quick!
Who knows what cracks may open and
what worlds may be tumbled into if the monster should arrive;
would the boy be left senseless, eyes a-distance,
or a wicked, smiling changeling, or a pair of empty shoes?
Is there such magic, such old, unwritten wizardry in the everyday places?
I have no idea, but he has me running fit-to-win as well!

The view from a train

Travelling by rail gives me views I am not supposed to have. Human activity and urban sensibility demand that I approach by road, on foot or by car, and see the face that places want to project – the front of a house, the shop façade, the planned vista. The railway, on the other hand, ignores convention and ducks around the side and back, and for all that impoliteness it barges through in a straight line or at best in a gentle and graceful curve as though ignoring the things it passes. But surely things were built this way? Surely the railway was here before the majority of the landmarks of the townscape? Maybe. Nevertheless even the Georgian villas present the reverse of their wooden fences to me, the obverse being a quiet component of a garden. It is not the train that sees things at all, it doesn’t care a jot for the intrusion, its progress is a linear dance to the tune of its diesel motor and the rhythms of the track. It is I who am the voyeur, keeking at the dirty underwear of the town. The town doesn’t care. It was built this way, showing its bent and ugly back to the travelers, showing us contempt. “I shall show hoi polloi my arse! Folk of quality roll up to my front door by carriage, knock, present a gilt-edged card. Only the ragged are shuttled behind me. If they demand respect, let them come by foot and see my porticos, my pediments, my railings of wrought iron.”

Not that we notice, of course. Newspaper, book, and now laptop, iPod, iPhone, iPad, tablet, gamer… only the indolent (me) technophobe (me) lexophobe (me) looks out of the window,

and

sometimes the town shuts with a bang. Someone has built a new housing estate that just out into the countryside. Its edge is as sharp as a kitchen-knife, and the green field full of sheep with dirty wool and patches of reddle leaps up at me immediately the instant I pass in the train. Whose idea was this insanity? Who decreed that there should be no debatable area but instead of that an ugly, stark interface?

There is a pick-up-sticks of broken doors,
poles, planks, grey and shadowed in angularity;
my head turns in direct proportion
to the speed of the train, and the sight is lost…

unless of course… the weather turns against us…

… rain making scars
across the face of a window.

In summer the rose bay willow herb is dense. Or is it loosestrife? The former I think. Someone I knew called it railway weed, or parson’s prick because it pops up everywhere – episcopalis vulgaris erectens or some such. I wrote a story once about being asked by an elderly Japanese couple what the tall, pink weeds at the side of the track were, and how I watched them mouth each word carefully. Rose. Bay. Willow. Herb. I can’t find it now. This tall, waving plant is the hair on the back of the town’s neck. It blushes and is beautiful from a distance, ugly close-to. It sighs and bows to the train’s bow-wave. It has its own eyes and watches back, pink-lidded and dusty with sleep. Left to its own devices it would colonise no further. It seems not to need to. It seems to know the limit of its domain. No flower defines the edge more than rose bay willow herb.