Near Perigord*

Dordogne in Perigord

If you wait for me then I'll come for you
Although I've traveled far...

You take me to a church terrace perched atop a limestone valley. We watch the Dordogne far below, wending its way with inexorable and disquieting patience towards the sea.

“So tell me why you’ve brought me here.”

You shrug and give me a solemn smile. “I’m waiting.”

You would say no more after that.





“ I didn’t want to wait until my next visit to give you this.”

You hand me a slim volume bound in midnight blue silk fretted by a band of silver knotwork. I run my fingers over the cover. The book falls open in my hand.

The pages within are pure and perfect in their ivory blankness, untouched by pain.

“You’ve written stories for others,” you explain. “ I thought perhaps, this time… you might like to write your own.”

“Thank you.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.





It is an hour before evening. The rose-gold sky cast a pallid hue over our solitary figures.

I pick up my bags. “ I have to go.”

You come forward and slip me under the bridge of your arms. I am anchored there with quiet intensity, shielded from the world in the space of a heartbeat.

I look up, and you step back, your hands falling to your sides.

“Leave me quickly,” you say.





I sit near the window lost in thought, the silken material of the book pressed against my lips. I've tried to turn through the empty pages to the very end, but there doesn't seem to be one. There is always a clean page, waiting to be filled.


…write your own.


My own stories cannot exist in reserve. They require words. And words, like names, have the power to bind…to summon.


I’m waiting.


Though unbidden, it’s always the thought of you that stands at the edge of these words.


I'll find my way back to you
If you'll be waiting...






* title borrowed from the Ezra Pound poem
* The Promise by Tracy Chapman