On Visiting Alderley Edge in the Hope of Finding a Wizhard
I wanted to follow in their footsteps –
inhaling the clean filth of leaf mould.
Terror and adrenalin giving scent
to the enemy; to be “relentlessly
pursued by outlandish creatures.”
Then, when all hope was lost, to hear
the gates roar as they opened
to a world of pale blue flame and milk
white mares but I’m lost
on the Wizards Path – tricked
by svart alfar- and trying to reconcile
the convergent memories
of book and prior pilgrimage.
I remember my last communion
at the well as sodden and solemn
in a hollow – the focus of a grove.
Opaque sun percolating through
fat drizzle – protected by the trees
– a wall of stone behind, funnelling
us into adventure.
But the claustrophobic bole
of my misremembered landscape,
is an open outcrop, exposed to the skies,
battered by wind. Its naked wildness
emasculated by plastic safety fencing;
an unwelcome barrier between scarp
and prospect. The ghost of a wizard,
my Wizard, once bold, clean cuts in the rock,
have eroded; neglected. His stilted welcome –
“Drink of this and take thy fill,
for the water falls by the Wizhard’s will”
– all but gone; sandstone grit, weather-ground
from the face and words of a childhood
paragon, chases along runnels
and dissolves into legend.
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