The villages: Playford

She had me as a foreigner in my own home,  
cast adrift and unsure. I was a thief,  
in the lighter nights, stealing glances of her,  
through the long halls of her solitude.  
 
Children played, in the street nearby, each morning. They strung soft words of sunshine and spring and swings  
- she didn't.  
Her long path of a neck led me to a thicket and branches of dark hair,  
her rushing streams sought me out, implored me, made me want her.  
 
I frequented, hiding in the maze her past lovers had planted around her.  
I laid warmth to the ground and listened to the silence, the night by night silence  
that she would endure. Her ears heard me, pricked,  
she didn't cast me out with a mouth full of pips, as I'd expected.  
 
She swallowed me one morning, in the blossom of almost a smile.  
I imagined I could be kept there, staring from her single pane windows,  
sharing the work load of being such an achingly little woman.  
She said I'd never have enough drive for a pocket heavy enough to keep her.

[Photography: Fergus]