On not mending wall
Under the Downs at Zennor there’s a dry stone wall that has its roots in the thirteenth century but there’s another dry stone wall less than a metre from my door that the council declines to make good. When the rains come, every autumn, more earth is washed away: there’s slippage and another stone dislodges. The stones over-winter like clitter from the tor and the icy cold thrusts in its rigid finger; then water and ice must take their toll, forcing one granite boulder from the next. But each following spring, Brigid lets down her hair and emerges, green and dripping, from the ocean. Greedy and fecund, she steals up the morrab, planting blackthorn in fissures and cracks. Between coarse and seedy grasses, her stripling plants obtrude their tender roots, sensitive as alien feelers, while last year’s ivy, stubbornly insistent, pushes out new tendrils and shoots. At Imbolc, Bridget brings gorse and cheerful brialli, like tin ore shining in seams. She fills our April alley with the scent of wild garlic; and, here and there, a lent lily peeps. There’s a chorus line of daffodils and bluebells, in May; they come kicking up their heels in praise of Sun. Shy dog violets nap in the shade and the first of the scabious come creeping; after which, in June, in white and pink, the full-skirted bindweed makes her debut; and long-legged all heal, dressed in red and white; and fuzzy foxgloves in a dozen shades of purple; while, July through August, our wall is ablaze with montbretia’s rude, fiery tongue. But, late September, with Samhain approaching, is the time when the council man comes cutting, cutting. He disturbs and displaces the roots of the past; another stone dislodges and is gone. Then, in December and January, the Cailleach comes. Our wall bears the brunt of her fury. Great storms blow in, driving the rain sideways and the wind whips across from the ocean. Under the Downs at Zennor there’s a dry stone wall that’s still rooted in the thirteenth century. In Zennor, the council man does not come. In Zennor, good farmers know walls.
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Abigail Ottley is a member of Cornwall’s all-female Mor Poets Collective. Her collection ‘Out of Eden’ (Yaffle Press) celebrates the strength and resilience of working class women. She is based in Penzance.
Castle Poetry 
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