in the grey, churning mill pond at the bottom of the garden
grows pale flax root and creeping ivy.
the wisps of wood are twisted and knotted
that's why, when i am five or six,
i peer into the icy water. I peer and yet I cannot see
the tendrils of flax root, so I wade in, stick legs blue from cold
and skirt floating like a kelpie's mane in the water around me.
It is still too dark to find my flax and ivy.
I brace my pink, shiny face and 1,2,3!
I plunge in, submerged as i squat in the millpond's murk.
Muffled screams from my mother, which I do not heed, as i finally touch the flax and ivy roots on the far bank.
Suddenly i am wrenched from my cool, quiet, muddy hole,
and later my father nails boards over the millpond, and all my little roots must wither and die from lack of sunlight.
my memories of that pond grow clouded
like tadpole water and sodden murk