THE MOTHER SCATTERING – MALVERN HILLS

We chased around the lanes.
We could see the hill.
We just didn’t know where to stop.
Like the rain.
Somehow one way didn’t feel quite right so we doubled back.
We found a car park where others had stopped
To venture up.
As we climbed Breedon we knew this was wrong.
This was not where she meant.
We paced back and scooted across the drag and down
To another now emptied parking space.
To race against the blackening mount of cloud.
Too late.
She would have said, ‘The rain falls on the righteous.’
She would have been right.
Instead it hummed and drummed and stung the car roof.
We cowered inside.
And then. And then. The beat stopped.
Just the odd pulse off a tree.

We clambered out into the birthing light and bunched up the slope.
Children, grandchildren, climbing up to see.
What? We didn’t know.
A thought, a dream, a memory.
A landscape of life spread out before us.
A vista, whole, complete
Of towns and spires and family history.
The crying wind whipped and whistled and flecked rainspit in our face.
The hillslope stretched on to the final distant Cross.
Well trodden but just then strangely wasted.
Inclemency had seen off potential detractors.
We were left with private painful thoughts of how and when.
And why.

Nature called time.
A rainbow arched across the little land below.
Water married sun.
The wind briefly died.

He, her only son, had cradled that pathetic, plastic casket in arms,
days later to bear the mewing of his first born boy.
Carried her gently up there. A light but weighty task.
Silent he unscrewed the lid and we knew.
Spewed smoke funnelled.
Dust to Dust.
Come unto me.
An unspoken pact. We all took blame. We all took hold.
One by one we shared. We took our turn.
To toss ash to the wind.
Gritty bitty pearly stone of bone gustered blustered back.
We swallowed in her host.
Clumps fell to the ground. Some took flight.
Returned home, above and below.

And then another spectrum rented open the greying sky
A further rainbow echoing the first
As colour loaded colour, double hooped and glorious.
And into the aching wind a skylark sang,
The sweetest note to silence all torrents, all gales.

And in that arching moment we drank the chalice of our thoughts.

And then Death wrapped up the cathedral light and was gone.

Life sprung back
Murmuring groups braving the new found sun marched towards us.
A brief joke. A final gulp of the panorama
Lofty glimpse of a great coherence of how all things are linked: rivers, towns, roads.
Lives.

We then descended back to the car
And the rest of our lives waiting below.