Walked Far Woman Poem by Tony Jolley

Bruebach to Brunstatt to Didenheim
Every day, without fail, rain or shine.
Stick-thin – and a thin stick at that –
No 'old stick' though:
Young, but with far too many miles on her clock;
Calves the size of your wrist,
Arms thin as a doll's,
Waist of one teetering on the short side of teenage,
Ploughing her lonely furrow
Hard as the miles and Macadam underfoot,
Her flint face dead-set against the god of Distance
That dared deny her:
A rock in a very hard place -
A singular human in her solitary race.

Wager she never felt a following wind:
She'd have turned and faced it down
Rather than have it lighten her load
Or goad her glory.
Not for her the easy victory –
She wore the curse of her indomitability
As a brand seared stark into her soul
Still smouldering on the surface:
A moving volcano spewing and strewing around her
The sulphur and silica of some secret suffering
Like a billowing cloak of nuée ardente
Flaying flesh from bone.

But no longer.
No more.
Snuffed out like a candleflame
By unbridled horsepower
And unyielding steel
With just a mere kid at the wheel.

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1. 'Walks Far Woman' was a Raquel Welch film about a Balckfoot Indian woman whose family were gunned down in cold blood by some cowboys. She learned to shoot, treked and tracked them down then clinically finshed them off.

2. This poem was about a middle-aged, local woman who was always seen too-briskly walking far too far for her own good along country lanes with no verges. We often thought she might meet her end that way. A lantern and shrine on a country bend in the road this week tells us she did.....