Prayer to St Margaret of Antioch, at her well in Binsey

 


Prayer to St Margaret of Antioch, at her well in Binsey  

Grant me a journey in a carp.

Let me dive into the belly of the fish.

Let the carp dive deeper into the algae greened waters.

Let me be housed like the child at the centre of a Matroshka doll.

 

Take me to the silent tranquility of your well -deepness.

Let the cool autumnal waters cure my malady.

Afterwards let me be a joyful ex-crutch user, striding strongly away.

Looking for the winding of the rivers to follow.

Watching as past antiquity layers the present.

 

This path was once a Medieval layby, pilgrim’s path, now over built by the Western By-Pass.

Margaret’s Holy Well at Binsey waits as it has through millennia.

And Saint Margaret is a long way from her home in Pisidia.

 

She sits contemplatively on the steps by the Holy Well staring into the darkness.

Her long reliquary hair braided and coiled like a sailor’s knot.

Leaning forward she drops the hammer she is so often depicted as holding

into the still waters.

 

A hammer’s blow under water is muted by gravity and silence.

Unlike the violence it imparts on land.

Its beating and banging is absent as it plums the depths of the waters.

 

It drops, wavering through the water as it falls.

It descends with the swiftness of letting go.

Like the parting, as we plunge from life to death,

despite the petitions of the fourteen Holy Helpers.

 

As the hammer hits the well bottom.

A sonic underwater boom blooms and distorts the stillness.

The watery vibration softly flexes the water weeds,

causing an ever widening ripple on the surface.

The motion gently vibrates the pilgrim medals and ruffles their ribbons and strings.

It rattles the rosaries and holy pictures hanging in remembrance.

 

Saint Margaret stands and sighs and fades into the mist that has fallen as we have sat.

Leaving in her trail the scent of saltpeter and marsh marigold.


[image of the Holywell at st Margaret's, Binsey. First published in the Maltfriscan newsletter, the Bripper. May 2021].

 

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