Saint David’s Head   In my defense, as I would later tell myself, I was weary, footsore, alone. I had no map — but no matter. The Welsh moors, the Irish Sea beating on the stones a hundred feet below — who needs maps? I would take no rest, I told myself, until I reached Saint David’s Head, and then I’d lie on the grass beside the path, have my fill of the wine I’d brought to help me admire my arrival at the end of the world. I conjured ghosts of murmuring druids, choirs of angels as luminous as schoolgirls to greet me, sing my song. But every time I reached the farthest headland, there would be another, still farther ahead; the fine spring day reproached me, mocked me. After three such defeats I finally lost heart and let myself collapse beside the path and chew my onion vanities, watch the sun set into the sea, drown it in wine. In due time I stood and stretched and watched a gull hop effortlessly into the headwind, hovering there in flightless flight, the pull of gravity poised against the relentless push of wind. And then I saw the trick — the path bore right. The rocks I’d seen ahead — an island. And this is where banshees shriek at fools who’ve been here all along — Saint David’s Head.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont February 2012