Across the road from the Abbey it is special. Welcoming. Quiet.
There is rain. There is always rain it seems. Slippery cobbles and the sound of a cock crowing distant in that gentle insistent rain. The insistent quiet in the gentle rain.
There was someone here before as I reach the gate. And is still. They are still. But as insistent as the rain and the quiet.
Not silent. Just quiet. They are here and they are near.
I go gently with respect. Humbled because I feel them. A steady presence. I made a wish with them, like none I have before. Not success and wealth because they will be and I have them. But a wish more vital in its opposite. A wish.
What a place you have for home, gentle and fierce giants small and powerful. In this stillness, in this rain.
I have felt you. Seen your traces. And I wish I were there, next to me, with you. Saint M’s of the silence I could call you for my own. And it is not silence, but the stillness of all of you here.
Cool damp, gentle rustlers. Those who rustle and watch. Be rustlers of my heart. Steal me to you where I will feel at home like now in these graves. I know I will.
I am not afraid. Not like so many times before. Silly, unknowing and shivering in a space, someone’s eternal home I did not understand, clinging. Clinging so hard to these images on this mist. This known.
For the first time, rugged Wales. . . The first time such smallness on the map of the nothing I think I know, a map of this breathing life, I laughed at you. Not badly, but with no sight past my ignorance. But is it not acceptable to learn? I did learn your magnificence. By accident, by intervention of someone sent to me. No accident.
“Have you seen — ” No, she didn’t say that. She said, she wrote, “Do you know — ” Or maybe it was “You must go to — ” And I did go. Alone like always. On guard like always because of being alone. But going because of it, not in spite of it. As always. Something to prove. Something, some fear to overcome. And when it’s done, where is my reward of “well done, girl.” Alone. Only from my voice in my ear.
So I went. Up the abandoned narrow path into the stillness with all those. . . those without names to be said. With directions from a Welsh woman I had to memorize three times. Afraid. Would I be lost up there? There, just peering through the thick green shield of trees. Thick and spread together. Thick so they make darkness, there, beneath their arms.
You are there. I am there. We are still together. Thank you.
