First Love

You were tall and beautiful You wore your long brown hair wound about your
head, your neck stood clear and full as the stem of a vase. You held my hand in yours and we walked slowly, talking of small familiar happenings and of the lost secrets of your childhood. It seems it was always autumn then.

The amber trees shook. We laughed in a wind that cracked the leaves from black boughs and set them scuffling about our feet, for me to trample still and kick in orange clouds about your face.

We would climb dizzy to the cliff's edge and stare down at a green and purple sea, the wind howling in our ears as it tore the breath from white cheeked waves. You steadied me against the wheeling screech of gulls and i loved to think that but for

your strength i would tumble to the rocks below to the fated death, your stories

made me dream of. i don't remember that i looked in your eyes or that we ever asked an open question.

Our thoughts passed through our blood, it seemed, and the slightest pressure of our hands decided all issues wordlessly. We watched in silence by the shore the cold spray against our skin in mutual need of the water's firece inhuman company, that gave promise of some future, timeless refuge from all the fixed anxieties of our world.

As we made for home we faced into the wind, my thighs were grazed by its icy teeth, you gathered your coat about me and i hurried our steps towards home, fire and the comfort of your sweet strong tea. We moved bound in step. You sang me songs of Ireland's sorrows and of proud women, loved and lost. I knew then, they set for me a brilliant stage of characters, who even now, can seem more real than my most intimate friends.

We walked together, hand in hand. You were tall and beautiful, you wore your long brown hair wound about your head, your neck stood clear and full as the stem of a vase. I was young - you were my mother and it seems, it was always autumn then.

Mary Dorcey