And it is very hard. No more lying on the floor with the phone listening to a nocturne—that intimacy. Soul escapes like a figure walking quickly, almost but not quite running, into the woods, wanting to get away fast from the pain. And the solitariness of it all— no one knowing, nothing to be seen, no sound. If we could really know that moment, that silent movement, we might live our lives differently. Ask the body what it wants. Give it to the body. Sing each morning the way only our voice can of a cloud of white butterflies, the river with three holy wells. Let us meet in the room of our lives, the room of grieving desire, while there is time, before the soul is called back from the frail crafts of our bodies.
Margaret Lloyd was born in Liverpool, England, of Welsh parents and grew up in a Welsh immigrant community in central New York State. She has published a book on William Carlos Williams’s poem “Paterson” (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) and four poetry
collections, most recently Travelling on Her Own Errands: Voices of Women from The Mabinogi (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch). Lloyd has also published in journals such as AGNI, Poetry East, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist and Poetry Wales. www.margaretlloyd.net.
