Plain living but high thinking, went his theory
and his thoughts flew over fells,
skipped like stones on Rydal Water,
while she cooked plain, wrote plain.
She knew how flowers were dried,
the price of tea
(and how to use leaves twice and share them round),
made candles out of mutton tallow,
grew broccoli, potatoes, thyme.
She wrote his headaches down like poems,
jostling with spring lambs, moonlight, lakelight
and the whole that seemed as hard to grasp as clouds.
One day she walked to Sour Milk Gill
and stood there as the water tumbled, curdled,
dirty white and echoing with liquid roars.
She couldn't look at milk that evening,
heard waterfalls everywhere in the house,
her sewing jumping, her head a creamy blur.
Next day she asked the butcher for a steak
for William who was looking pale.
The kitchen walls were dark with grease again,
the garden damp, her journal left aside.
Upstairs the rise and fall
of voices, pacing steps. Dictation taken.
But 'Nature never did betray the heart that loved her'
silently.
It rained. She put her twitching fingers to the meat
and whispered,
rubbing in the salt, the rosemary,
the thousand fragrant words
unspoken.
September 2000
