My Sixth lies at sea and in

the depths of the night, it is hard

to engender this spark of light.

*

My Second twinkles on high and

stands proud in the earth, this double

entendre is light strewn when birthed.

*

My Fifth is a man-child

forgotten by time, adrift on

a lotus… the flowering kind.

*

My Third is fire-bright and

flies like a flash, it is feathery

too, forever rising from ash…

*

My Fourth is hawk borne

and can teach us to fly it is

also known as ‘a silent eye’.

*

…From Head to Heart, a Way…

***

‘The Initiate – an everyday tale of Barge-Folk’…

Course, it’s not like this back on the ‘Naall’. On the ‘Naall’ things move at a nice, steady pace. One might even say stately. And when I say ‘things’ I mean life. Back on the ‘Naall’ life is a slow drift, a slow drift through   the foliage and fauna of this sacred space now and forever known as Albion. And that is really all there is. We move from one sacred space to another and back again. What else could there be? If you can imagine and I know it’s difficult for Busy-Folk. The optimum speed for a human body to move under its own volition is three miles an hour, and if it were possible, which it is not of course, but if it were possible to shift out of the body in some way and move still attached to it, then the optimum speed the ‘spirit body’ would find itself travelling at is between six and nine miles an hour. That’s the speed that a barge travels along the ‘Naall’. Neat huh?

Now, Wen, she knows this but being a speed freak the concept of six to nine miles an hour as a travelling speed is alien to her, utterly, completely, incontrovertibly alien. Life in the fast-lane she calls it. I mean she even changed the title of my book when I presented her with the honour of being the very first of the Busy-Folk to read it

‘This will never do’ she said, or some such…

‘What, you don’t like it?’

‘It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just…’

‘You don’t like it do you?’

‘I do like it. I like it a lot but what you have to realise Don, is that us Busy-Folk, we like things spruced up a bit.’

‘Spruce away,’ I said, all desperate for publication, like. And well, that was a mistake, I mean, I ask you…

‘Sacred Chromatography’!

What’s all that about? Anyway, she dispensed with that for the second edition, and she liked the bird bits and said those could stay, so I suppose I’m reasonably happy with the results…

Give it ‘the whirl’, I think that’s one of Wen’s expressions. Give it the whirl and let me know what you think, especially the bird bits, if you can find me…

– ‘Slow-Drift’ Manchester to Liverpool Ship Canal.

***

Tenth Anniversary Hardback Edition – Here!

***