(In 2004,
the author and his wife visited Glastonbury
and the Tor)
The Journey
As we rode the train from London to Castle
Cary, through the slow, cozy green countryside, I began to fancy England had
gone back to its old medieval days. All the little towns outwardly no more than
pinnacles, dotted here and there, sort of. Set delicately at the top of rising
mounds.
From Castle Cary, we went to Glastonbury, where King Arthur and King Richard the Lion
Heart, long ago, both drew their swords in the glistening light of the far-off
meadows, of Summerset and on top of the Tor of Avalon, where the Celtics
practiced there magic.
And there I stood too, on top of the mound, looking down, on the hurried
past.
The Legend
In one way it was a long afternoon on top of the Tor, now long past.
The old ruined Abbey Tower always in
sight, I wondered up and own the mound
exploring, paused long enough to stretch, came to a herd of humongous
cows—broad and tall, lazily eating the long grass, and my wife paused,
frightened somewhat. Then exploring its sides, I got thinking of an old legend,
from the days of the old monastery of
friars: and I came to imagining looking down at the extending roots in a
crevice, when the three friars hallway
up the mound found a tunnel on the wall, below the ruins, young and ignorant
they wanted to search it from end to end, in spite of the precisely dangerous
calamity it might bring—and as they did, currents of air snarled among the
stale winds that spiraled in, from the mound’s exterior, it was all they had to
breath, besides the endless tunnel’s mud and dirt and moss-shadows. Thus,
throughout the labyrinth: roots tumbling
everywhere, body snagging on old useless rocks: only one friar ends up alone at
the other end, half insane, half dehydrated, after a day’s wondering. His mind
dry as his mouth in dire thirst, scrapped into crumbs never to be pieced back
together again: appearing to have no more sense than that of a mosquito.
#3888 (April 28-29, 2013)
