Gathering Place of The souls

The Bible's psalms are named after consonants from the Hebrew alphabet. The first is 'Apleph.'
Imagine the names of the consonants eg; 'Aleph,' Tzaddi,' 'Koph,' 'Teth,' as the names of souls . They are between incarnations, waiting in the 'Gathereing Place of The Souls,' a place where the souls in the psalms go to wait for their next life. Some souls have clear momories of their past life and and a clear idea of what they want to choose to be in the next life. some are hazy, or have no memory of a past life at all. If you take a name and write from its point of view as if it were in the 'Gathering Place of the Souls', reflecting on past or pondering future life, it can sometimes spark some interesting ideas.


LEGEND

My Nan is a professional footballer.
She dribbled her way to the Premiership
and is a legend called Dwight Mitchell.
She doesn’t know she’s my Nan.
She lost track when she dribbled
into a twilight she no longer remembers
where a dancing man lurked behind
netted windows, winking at her under
a peaked cap that shone in the rain.
I laughed when she told me about him;
swanlike and starched in his uniform
and the doll as her baby
warm and plastic in her bed.
‘It’s only a doll,’ the care worker said.
‘You know - I know - but does she know?’ My Nan said.
When the priest as tall as a steeple sent her off,
she knew she wanted to be Dwight Mitchell;
a roaring rich success.
Not like the last time,
when she thought it would never end
each time she fell,
stumbled or bruised.
An ancient child.
The real girl sometimes clear
in the blue of her favourite sister’s eyes.
The one who would not come to hear her
life cut short by the tall priest.
Now she bruises her way to other sending offs
and can’t remember fifty years of
stagnant talk with mouthfuls of porridge
to a man like a breath of stale air.
Or the son who trampled her
to throw fists at his father
or the daughter creeping into wall paper
like a cautious cat.
Now she’s linked romantically to Chelsy Davy
(Prince Harry’s ex), according to ‘Hello’ magazine,
which she used to read at the hairdressers
and now reads when she’s having her back waxed.
I met her in a night club and said; ‘Hello Nan.’
Her eyes were shot with vodka and she punched me in the head.

(Copyright Tess Hudson 2008)