Once walking through fields,
as he held my hand I asked him to teach me.
He didn’t reply

or speak for a while as we paced our steps,
slowing to my rhythm, our eyes on the sun
falling on fields, patches of shadow,
walls and trees lining our path.

On we walked, our feet walking on silver
reflections, opaque sprinklings of dew after rain,  
until he stood, pointed to a pookie
hidden between moss
and grass, 
‘Now,’ he said, ‘Look, that’s where fairies live.’ 
As I looked, a story my mother loved to read to us
flashed in my mind –
the one about the woman who lived in a shoe, 

and there under the canopy of her mushroom roof
I could see her and her children busy inside the stalk,
heads sticking out, two windows upstairs,
one down, as they scurried about, in and out
of its red door.

I could feel the warmth of her fire
telling grandad everything I saw.

That’s when he said, 
‘Now look up’ 
‘look up,’ he stressed again,
as I struggled to lift my gaze from the friends
I’d just met. 

‘Look up,’ and I did.
‘Now tell me what you see?’ 

I saw horses galloping, a chariot on fire,
and my grandmother walking towards the sun.