Looking for Lucy Lloyd
By Philip Sidney
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While recording lives of others
her own slipped away.
She lingers in sepia as
a face that won’t fit.
Victorian vicar’s daughter -
poor relation to landed gentry
she understood the shifting nature of ownership.
Hand maiden to the past, her present and the future.
More unsettled than settler -
she anchored herself to the edge of her world
with a pen.
Tied her slender life to the sounds of others
recounting memories, imagined/real -
both are one,
in death.
The /Xam spoke to her, she heard, she saw, she left us:
to catch a porcupine, follow the bat,
the girl of the early race who made stars.
Listen carefully, feel the pause, the gentle breath.
Her urgent hand moves with the click and cadence
of the precious word.
Voice, heavy with the weight of years
runs out before the ink -
and yet it is preserved.
Kabbo. One man speaks for a shadow people.
Her trials and tragedies
are also bleached to the bone, crumbled into sand
blown across land, sea, time.
Eyes travel over letters and become part of the rhythm of movement
as voice, interpretation, transcription, meaning,
become one.
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Comments
A soothing piece with real
A soothing piece with real transporting qualities.
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HI Helen
HI Helen
This is a very lovely tribute to I presume, Lucy Lloyd, who was a writer whose work you vallue. You used such interesting images - the idea of her voice running out before the ink - which I take to mean that her words live long after her death. Beautiful.
Jean
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