CELIAS FIRST LOVE.

He is her first love, the love which makes her want to open her arms to the early day, hear bird song, wash in the cold water the maid brings, breaking the ice, her hand scooping up the coldness to her face, and the o yes this is it, feel, in her. Before him there were only dull mornings, icy ablutions, boring birds singing, and her father lecturing at the morning table about the horses or the birds for the shoot or how well his dogs hunt. This first love, this exciting explosion, this wanting to run through the fields undressed and sing loudly, this new born, fresh as a lamb kind of love, this tingling through the veins and nerves feeling, this is what the poets name love, their words ticking off the

virtues, their voices calling across shires, hills and seas. She wants him to come, wants his arms about her, his lips on hers, she thinks of him each moment of her day, senses him in each touch her body feels, in each smell of air. She wants him there. Before him there was just the routine of daily visits to the poor of the parish with he mothers gossip, picking of flowers, the dull witted wit of her tiresome brothers, before this first love she almost drowned in the daily drudge, but now she feels each seconds tick, each moments prick, the over feel of air and breath and him maybe being there to watch her dress (unseen of course) and all the little things that first love brings. The maid helps her dress, buttons up at the back, brushes the hair, o o she wishes it were the first love there unbuttoning her dress and making her neatly done hair in a mess.