Feeling such thankfulness for your dear and beautiful friendships ….💜
Month: November 2016
The Narrator Returns
Day One :
There a bloom has fallen , laying off the path , red fading  almost grey . She picked it up and buried it . She was a reader of fairytales . The birds left broken shells under their nests and all the fields outside the city were soft and green . Voices , insects digging , wheat grass , musk , rusted gates , warm winds , always the wind , all of it , all of it in that green . She walks here often , the odor of pink painting the tender joy of her life .
Day Two :
There the white sheets are flapping on the clothesline when he appears . She was sitting on the front steps of her house on the corner of Parmalee Street . She is thin , small breasted and fine in stripped bell bottoms , poet blouse , Moroccan sandals , the leather pale and worn wrapping around her ankles , such beautiful bones . His heart was going like mad . The out of style clothes and the arch of her foot , unusual . He knew he would panic if she moved . She held a baby . The neighborhood lights dimmed . The summer of the year 1983 was ordained . The humming of the lawn sprinklers sang it .
There , under the sky , she  looked at him and looked at him longer and in that pause they both heard the birds screaming on the road above , so resplendent in escape . He would never forget the sound of her voice and she would never forget the sad drooping of his quite lovely left eye or the music he would later play for her . He stalked her with a plea that turned into a gift . His name is Paulo .
Day Three :
Well , he was young , just out of university . She was older with no education . He slept with ” Abba ” on the wall above his bed , she slept under the long neck of a Modigliani print under glass . Truth has an oblique face , an extraordinary stone the gods hide deep within . The hunt began the day they met , maybe paradise , maybe a nightmare , maybe both . Her name is Mary .
That same week :
And there , two hundred miles to the north , along the coast of the Great Lake Michigan  where apples hang heavy on the trees , a young man overturns a silver rowboat , pushing it into the waves of an inland lake . His name yet unknown .
The 13th Month
In the pause
the year of our Lord
with moons soft skin surface
she did remember
ashamed to be on cemetery road
with a wearisome lover , a toxic presenter .
her light lit in strangers
his first underground tantrum
the animals digging demanding ransom .
she did not die
she just went somewhere
the shrill trumpet
one long note , a siren cry .
in the pause
the lunar month kingdom come November
she did remember
relief to watch the fish swimming shallow
scales of gold leaf a washed in splendour
like spaceships on cathedral wall frescoes ember
with Saints and kings
their cut off heads in glass case transgender
again the drum , again the drum
she did not die , she did not die .
in the pause
in the headlights of the dark
she did remember
the moon , her body massive
a swell , no bones the cosmic fish anointed
river salmon swim the wrong way
yearning to be back home
the second tantrum
the compass north to abandon .
platinum gifts arranged before her ,
potatoes cooked in caves and grottos
a blind pony , perfect braids , a shiny shell anklet
the Good Harbor passage running
herds with broken heart clefts
a whirlpool startling birds
causing snake movements straight into a tree
where again the drum
booms lyrics now of Vermeer mood to see .
she did not die
she just went somewhere
the shrilling trumpet hallows
its final note , Michigani’s brutal storm
her throne to sail on rising confessions possession
again the drum , again the drum
she did not die , she did not die .
Last photo by Rosemary Alpert Photography