a palmful of rain

Rain. July so far as wet as June. In the courtyard a family of bluetits flits through the seeding cranesbill twitteringly, like a handful of seedheads themselves. I park by the little churchyard with its old wooden gate, lichen-bearded. They've taken the two condemned but as far as I could see perfectly healthy young trees, and the meadow is marked by two absences. Behind, in the cemetery, in rain, beneath reprieved trees, someone is hunched on a bench in front of the graves. I can see even from here how he's brushing water from his face. With a now-familiar shock I remember yet again that my mother is dead

     I tilt my face to the rain, hold up my palms, think about absence, about washing-away. And then the dance. T makes the shapes of tai chi. J smiles serenely. A is a mad monk then a Sufi dervish. I forget death, absence, illness, stress – I forget who I am in the dance. There is a moment when the music and my body slip me, whoever 'me' is, through a narrow keyhole into ecstasy. Time starts to slide and I'm back on the blue heights of Treshnish, above the white crescent of Traigh Calgaraidh, wind roaring at my ears until all thought is washed out and the wind is me and I am the wind

and again there is only the dance