“Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.
Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
James Aloysius Joyce, Ulysses

T’was the night before Christmas,
It was dark and cold and dreary.
Dark, black night.
For lettered and unlettered alike;
Fearing the roaring of the skies,
Trembling at the dying of the light;
Fear seeped up from the miasmic ground.
Wind and the rain alight on me, all around me.
Scurrying through the lanes and fields,
Thunder in the air.
She’d vowed she’d be good, live plain,
And be there, taking care
Now our Annie dared not turn around,
She dared not breathe too loud, in case
She missed his footfall on the swampy ground.
He was a-shrieking
In his shroud. Stumbling past the graveyard
A bolt of lightning split the tree and sent her
Shrieking wildly. fearing goblins, ghosts and me.
O! Aye, the devil was on a spree.

…….
In the morning, her long hair hanging free,
As white as white can be ……and she….
and she.... just twenty-three.

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