Anne of Green Gardens

Sometimes she read as she walked. The grey gilt light and the scent of damp leaves and woodsmoke from the farm. Crows in the fields, the mist rising from the river. The anticipation of hot chestnut soup and bread with cheese and apple dumplings. And she never felt melancholy, never, for her soul could rest and soar in the darkening autumn months, when no demands were made upon her, no tiring expectations of society or travel or that particular form of forced vivacity which made her tired to the very bones.

A young man, gassed at Ypres, went to convalesce in a village on the Downs. The schoolmistress made him gingerbread & brought him books, the tame ravens from the copse dropped silver coins by his chair, & one by one, his ghosts carefully took up their packs & whispered farewell.

All Souls' Day It was All Souls' Day, and in the blue dusk light, carrying a lantern, Old Fox walked down to the churchyard. A barn owl called down from the tower, and was answered somewhere in the trees. Leaves cloaked the paths between the yews and the tombs and the lichen-mottled stones, and by the wall which edged the village green, white and violet Michaelmas daisies were drooping in the mist. Then, as though called by a silent bell, one by one they came. They stood patiently by their graves, in crinolines and houppelandes, delicate white muslins and fiery red satins. There were sailors and fishermen, seamstresses and sail-makers, judges and fruit pickers, architects and school teachers, farmers and stone masons, little cubs and bright-eyed, giggling children and rows of the ancient with their sticks of thorn. In one corner, shaded by a friendly old oak, a family of badgers, as close-knit in death as in life. Around one tall cross, soldiers stood, laughing and sharing cigarettes. A grand and very decayed tomb was flanked by a beautiful lady holding hands with a knight in half-armour, and a tall grey-eyed wolf sat sternly next to an ivy-wreathed angel, wings weathered by a hundred frosts. Old Fox went to each in turn, greeting them and listening to stories he had heard over countless years and those fresh and green in the telling. Many were dear friends. Some had messages for the living; others, older, fainter in form, tried to tell of the place of the fixed stars where they dwelt, but there were no words to carry their meaning. Old Fox, however, well-versed in ancient and high things, understood all, and as he moved slowly between the graves, lantern steady in the fog, he distributed such comfort and kindness and mercy, that not one soul felt forgotten or lost or small, however lonely or inconsequential they had felt in life, however brief their time. When he left, he turned back as he pulled the gate shut, and for a brief moment, an uneven scatter of rush-lights seem to flicker in the darkness, and then they were gone, as though they had never been.

Congratulations America! Thank you for giving the world some hope this November morning! 🥀