................................................................................................................

ERRANDS
by Wendy French

and on the ground the purple flower
(Sappho Fragment 105A)


At Goudhurst I stop and buy Green Tea
before entering the churchyard.
Here graves are not guarded by statues.
I leave no money to ward off evil spirits.
I unpick stitches of your last morning;
you leave the boat for that errand, tea half-drunk.
As I walk to your plot an old school-bus stops
at the end of the lane, collects children
for home. Symbols on Taipei's dilapidated buses
had been impossible to decipher
and we ran, laughed, not knowing
how to recognise signs that we needed.

I could walk to your grave blindfolded.
The ground needs to settle in a way you never did.
You found our bus by holding up the paper
to an elderly man who led us forward.
The driver took his fare out of our purse
and we were on our way to buy bean curd.
We rode through shadowed landscapes -
hills rising out of earthquaked lands.
The tofu in the market made our stomachs heave.
Here, stillness, head stones.
Steps on concrete the only winter sound
and I walk alone, carry one small tree.