In Between Time’s Writer in Residence Osunwunmi shares words evoked by Lucy Cash and Mark Jeffrey’s Winterage Last Milk. A beautiful film, shared as part of IBT21 The Rupture.
“Who is this who is coming over the hill?”
Some tawdry scarecrow weathercock rare bird. Some cowboy. Some Dark Morris dancer. Some second-sight practitioner. Some beloved son. Some golden boy. Some son of the soil. Some whole but different person.
Some revenant
Gold turns to shit and shit to gold. Tinsel breaks down to midden straw. Spin straw to gold.
King / sorcerer / crowman conferring with the Herefords. as the crown of a Yoruba sacred king his crown is veiled a psychopomp a shaman winged and fringed. A cow-licked dancer. A hard and respectable worker.
Those tinselled trailing rhinestone Western jackets hang, flags of hide, and twist, vanes of hide signal indicate submit weather inhabits them weather is trailed by them.
That’s a wiry freckled hand. That’s a man’s hand. There’s dirt in that hand
Stroke the fabric, the garments, the grass like a person who made them, sewed them, wove them, washed them, wore them, was kept warm in them, or wet, or comfortable, or safe, or not. Was kept in them.
In the byre mist of warm breath, sweet breath, milk and shit. Wrapped in it. Stowed in it. Velvet.
What’s it like going away? What’s it like returning.
Whose land? Whose tongue (changing)? Who traces back what river what blueprint what record whose mud what weather (blowy) what marrow (yours) what show (glitter.) What cowboy, shining and singing. What father’s son.
Threshing. Hedging. Flapping. Dripping. Hares, not rabbits. Winterage gets over a bump. From winterage the season turns to plenty sure as it turns back again. Forage and winterage, back and forth, in and out, here and there, naked and clothed. Over and finished. Not finished. Never over. Same same.
Osunwunmi
