WORLD VOICES

MEANDERTHALS
  BY LUCY DOUGAN


Contents

Home
Introduction
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Wayside
Kenwood House
At Villa Bruno
Museum in the Park
The Forge
Municipal Pool, Sunday
The Past
The Shy Dog
Atavism I
Atavism II
Nettle Soup
Guillemots
Young Boy with Daffodils
At 10
Danny at Hathersage
A Letter from Spain
Thresholds
The Sleepout
Saint Catherine's,
      Abbotsbury

Small Family of
      Saltimbanques

Fritz
The Mice
A Mayfield Haunt
Notes Towards an
      Impromptu Garden

Female Pan

World Voices Home

The Literary Explorer
Writers on the Job
Books Forgotten
Thomas E. Kennedy
Walter Cummins
Web Del Sol



Museum in the Park

Four lanes away
the fringe of the park
is a vestigial flash
of when we moved
in herds, sweetly haired
and loping
(whether we were peaceable
or not, I can't say)

A woman stretches up to the willow
and it bends down to her—
all tender compliance—
like a tall lover kissing.
The children about her
are distant figures
stitched into place.
They own the lovely randomness
of a natural event.

From the film of the car window
this tableaux is more real
than travelling at speeds
faster than we
were ever meant to go.
The greenbelt
tightens in a thousand cities
and the same foraging woman
in frame after frame
repeats that complex subtle sway
from toes to hips to shoulders.
She is reaching for something
rehearsed and put aside
so many times, something
just beyond our grasp.