The twelve paths of the unspoken garden do not go anywhere but lead everywhere They go to places that do not exist.
They are: arboreal treads avenues of apostacy trails of faith routes to conflict retreats to solace cultural corridors continuous destinations lines of un-sapped text.
Come walk with me and even though I have not uncovered it I’ll show you what is not there.
If we pace ourselves something is unleashed by the beat of our soles. Hopes are inhaled regrets respired quandaries quelled solutions purloined. Premonitions are potted grafts plotted brows un-knotted.
Here is the arch of a haunting a twist or wrist in the branch or arm of a protagonist.
Here is the guard of dishonour, there the glasshouse, awaiting first stones,
and there the Escher stair always climbing up to the lowest level.
Here is the woodshed where there’s something chainsawingly nasty near my decapitated head.
And here the quad where imaginary defrocked monks exorcise immodest unholy spirits
and scrub their tonsured scalps with the trailing mantilla of woodland maiden aunts, while weeping their memories of clandestine deflowering, much lamented and hypocritically marked with anniversary buds.
Ah but at the heart of it all the avian market where the blues and great gossip and the dog-collared parsons of peace bless those who believe in angels and robin always the centre of attention but never seen in company sees off the tree-creeper pick-pockets that squirrel the cache away. Here hangs a swag-bag of scenarios draw-stringed noosed and tied for subsequent denouement.
Beneath the baking apples where she was is and always will be near Fernslayer’s realm which spawned an atheist’s prayer book and the recipe for a tonic to better the juniper bitters.
The Bani-shed in which I was self-exiled to build a boat and hence fit out a crate of spies that even those with the best binoculars could not see.
The Bani-shed: a portal to Otherland where celebs are strictly surreal and folk abducted from folk-tales find new lives new homes new stories and so many levels on which to be wrong as they leave way markers for we who follow.
High beneath our lookout the lake of contemplation in its shallows is never short of unplumbed depths. Heavy thoughts have surfaced there. Tread carefully on that gravel lest you knit my dreams too tightly.
Some paths seem to be dead ends where water butts block the wandering but have you seen the bounty in those barrels or a little further south where compost compounds press-ganging the gone into that which will rise again?
Who needs angels? Nature’s seraphim never die they just fly away.
Round and round the garden like a tethered bear pacing like a captive tiger souring like a fallen fruit.
Paths that wound from Arden to Hoghton as the bard versed to punctuate his Elizabethan boyhood.
Where the hammock now comforts rose thorns once caught the eye and pricked the memory of unsettled ghosts in haunting stories of Lancashire lives.
The meat of the rotting apples smells sweet and if crushed underfoot ferments into a firmament a reconstituted paradise riddled as all paradises are with parasites pestilence and perpetual life and dissolved by much-delayed heavenly precipitation into inky soil and soiled ink.
Let me lead you up the garden path. You can leave me there.
Everywhere.
Influenced
The unspoken garden has influenced so many scribblings including:
Of course, she was in the garden. There she was, rummaging in the bushes beneath the baking-apple tree, trowel in hand, foam kneeler beneath her knees, hair fastened back in the shortest of pony tails revealing a smudge of soil on her cheek. “Hello,” she said, kneeling up. “How was it?”
“Okay. Why are you digging there?”
“Hazel nuts. I know how much you like them.”
“What – harvesting or planting?”
“Recovering. I hid them here last autumn. They don’t grow on trees you know.” She giggled and her face split into the smile that always slew me.
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