Lindow Man
I did not falter in my steps.
No. When I lay down here to sleep
there was summer grass in my dreams.
I drank the wine your mother likes best.
The red, tired on my tongue
settled there before the blood,
my mouth awash with corn grains
and the flavour of my own arteries,
my last meal this side of the mountain.
When they came to stave in my skull,
I thought of your lips, bright wine-coated,
smudged with berries, pressed into mine.
* Helen Pletts is a regular IS&T contributor. She writes… “Discovered in 1984, preserved by naturally occurring chemicals in a peat bog in Cheshire (UK), the Lindow Man, is thought to have been a sacrificial victim (possibly of the Druids) during the Iron Age, some 2500 to 2000 years ago.
