poem

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch Vive la Résistance!

It was on such a night as this that I floated

like a débutante into the arms of a cornfield

outside Rouen, my parachute silks streaming

into a bridal train adorning the corn

and for the first time I felt the full weight

of what it must be to be a woman always

dragging a dress through obtuse fields. So I

unharnessed myself from the lot, rolled up

my folds and ran off to the lychgate

of Sainte Marie du Chêne where I was due

an assignation with a Monsieur Lefas

who passed me a map in a cigarette packet

which I followed to a farm to be met by

a frowning chap in breeches who unhooked

the door of a barn where his daughter was

hitching up a bed for me in linsey-woolsey.

At the altar I hovered between doubt

and belief until she glided down the aisle

stitched into my parachute and for a second

we soared above the priest, the spire,

the higgledy fields, the two of us threaded

together in the silks that had saved me

which I later unbuttoned and she trapped

in the attic in case they took off without us.