Epistle
by Allis Hamilton
after Niall Campbell
Understand this is handwritten: scrawled
on paper rubbed with ochre, red
as a chough's sly eye; sent, wrapped
in vine leaves and taped to the back
of a snail’s spun shell; or, rolled tight,
tied to the leg of a homing pigeon –
one who knows where to place the scroll
to have you stumble upon it when
you wake, staggering, fresh from a dream –
the page dribbled with drawings and laced
with half-solved mysteries and twisted myth.
I am writing this for I find myself recalling
your oblong house, its ivy a-sprawl
of tangled limbs nudging every window,
notebooks swollen with intricate maps
of sea floors, elaborate etchings of ants;
your tortoise plodding around the back garden
munching on dandelion leaves or grubs. I come
to realise our bodies cannot always follow
our floating thoughts; that this life may kiss us
goodbye before together we eat artichokes again,
drifting on a boat that takes us to the star-lit dance –
you singing folk songs all the watery way. I
want to tell you, I still hum that tune. Only now
I smell jasmine flowering in spring rain, feel
ancient wind telling the silver eye when to fly,
watch mycelium break the soil only to soak
in pale light, hear the forlorn bird’s unceasing song.