‘This is a point in our lives where we decide (or are forced) to throw the anchor down, to live in one place, have a teacher, dig in.’
– Martin Shaw

The word ‘anchorite’ or ‘anchoress’ comes from the Greek, anachoreo, meaning ‘to withdraw’.
– Mary Wellesney

I am not quite an anchorite.
I have not yet been buried alive.
Not with Christ. Not even with Gwyn.
I do not live in a cell twelve metres
by twelve metres with servants
to bring my food, remove my waste
and feed me books in exchange
for insights from a tiny window called a squint.

I have not yet given up all my worldly possessions or ambitions.

I like to run and might have been one of the nuns
who ran away like Isolde de Heton from Whalley Abbey
in the 1470s but not for forbidden children or men

but simply for the desire to roam however far
my walking, running or cycling legs will carry me
through the labyrinth of this land following the streets
that lie on older streets, on pilgrim’s paths and padways
and Roman roads and horse paths and deer paths.

The horses in me bolt from their stables when kept in too long.

They run with the hounds before the wolves and ravens,
the owls with their crazy eyes mad on psychedelics,
the portents from the stars and our gardens.

Honesty is here and all the pavement plants.

I am told I must be ‘a guide to the soul.’

I fear my revelations will be mundane and suburban.

They will include words like ‘cloths’ and ‘washing’ and ‘washing up’
but also honesty, Lunaria annua, enchanter’s nightshade, 
Circaea lutetiana, ivy, hedera, yew, Taxus buccata.

In a vision I am a hell-hound prowling around my anchor.
I am the anchoress who howls and where my head is I do not know.