in the air i rose, singing

he was a traveller, back then, he tells her.
she nods.
she knows.
he was a traveller, back then, he says, and his tone is wistful, as he recalls a life astride the wind and the wide world, and watches the waves from the seawall's lee.

by its right name

"between our birth and death we may touch understanding, as a moth brushes a window with its wing."
- christopher fry (english writer, 1907-2005)

the sadness has lifted, finally, its cumbersome heaviness hoisted high by time and love and circumstance; a tender translucence has taken its place.
this wistful weave of memory and mystery allows light in, gently, and light out, and the sheer splendour of life is visible once more.

remind me

the errant strands of auburn, the comely curve of ear, the glimpsed gold, dangling, delicate: he stops short.
"margaret?", he whispers.
and when he stumbles, and she turns, he realises.
he feels old, and flushed, and foolish, but oddly exalted. she was so near, and she has been so far away for such a long time.

to kingdom come

he was a prince of stances, effect above essence: she knows this now.
but it takes little - a posture, a profile, a pair of pigeoned toes - to remind her poignantly of something she no longer truly remembers.

a kind of a hush

all is past, he tells her, all is healing, all is well; in his eyes, though, transparent and blue, is a sadness that belies his story.
circumstance has tatted his existence into a mystifying intricacy, and she wants to reach, touch, reassure him: that someday, though the curtain may stay draped, he
will see the fineness of the filaments and not the empty grimness in between.

tea with grandfather

he sits, silhouetted by light and lace, corduroy rustling on corduroy, composed, hands clasping cup, pensive.
gazing solemnly over his straight and weighted shoulders is himself, as a boy. between them, dust dances, filling the metres, the minutes, the decades, with movement and memories, and the space between black-and-white and grey with a lifetime of colour.

non sequitur

someday, somewhere - inevitably - they will meet, and they will be near and imperfect strangers, pausing awkwardly, a hesitant handshake apart, and passing the time of
day, of months, of years, of a heart's age.
the distance between them will be peculiar and profound; no confidences will be shared, no explanations made, and no hurts healed: since the sweet sequence of their story was interrupted, simply too much time has passed.

the right road to somewhere

"i've often wondered..". he leans, earnestly, toward them as he stamps their tickets.
"what colour hair do you actually have?"
their fingers fly uncertainly to their framed faces, and they pluck at their austere headwear, too anxious at the unexpected question to see the twinkle in his eye.
"reddish", replies one, politely.
"black", adds the other. they quietly take their seats.
"and hello to you!", he greets the elderly woman tilting her rollator laboriously into the bus, "off to the disco again, i see?"
she giggles and swats his hand, and the two veiled girls, overhearing, realise, relieved, that they have not been singled out at all: they have been treated as equally as anyone anywhere could hope to be.
in retrospect, and finally - for that was his sincere intention - they smile.

one cool remove

he takes the call, there, in the chill shadow of empty market stalls, and, as she listens -
his voice is arch, charming - and shivers, he curves an arm around her.
it is an idle, an unintended, an unprecedented intimacy, and she leans, slightly
startled, into its absent-minded warmth.
"who was that, then?" she asks, as he pockets his phone.
"oh", he answers, "just someone..."
he looks, and slides, aside; their familiar distance is restored. they are, after all, just friends.
"...someone", he says, "from greece."

the space between

they swing separately, on their own hinges, transcribing slow arches on their
own halves of the meadow, and they never truly touch, for that is the nature of their commitment.
they face each other only at the end of time passed, equidistant and bound: by their mutual story, by this singular space, and by that endless, endless receding view.

every fool and every sage

there are tentative blue skies beyond these clouds, these tossing branches, this rain; but the only certainty, ever, it seems, is the randomness of curses and blessings.

and the clock struck twelve

midnight nears; it is almost tomorrow. enchantment ends.
one glass slipper dissolved into darkness on the palace steps, and the second - she can feel it splinter as she stumbles - has mere moments to linger.
she was barefoot, though, before the ball began, so it's back to the freedom of
shoelessness until the wand waves once more.

lo and behold

his eye - only one is open - looks through her and beyond her.
his ears - they are covered tightly - spurn her sweet, sad, treacherous tales.
disdain and distance, though, will never stop the stories, for they spiral, stubborn,
from the dimness, and they are still for him.

as dance it can

she is not captive; nor is she crippled.
this lonely pirouette is a feat of determination and nimbleness - she insists - and this gossamer a sanctuary that suspends her, in a gentle spin, somewhere between flourishing and falling.
she will surrender, because she has been surrendered, but she will take her stubborn time in tumbling, and spite her brittle fate.

curtain call

perhaps it was the dull and white-skied october day itself that pushed these reticent patches of colour onto center stage, where they bowed gracefully, blushed, and accepted the applause, the accolades, and the appreciative click of cameras.

*for i-gizmo: red.

i had some dreams

he clasps his cup in ungainly hands, and watches her stir. sugar dissolves; creamy clouds disperse, like fragile affection, like fantasy.
suddenly, it seems, he sees only obligation, and his heart hardens, and his shoulders stiffen, and his pale blue eyes concede that their imperfect affinity has faded, simply, into the august air.

a soul's age

under his intuitive hands she flourished, and under his earthly attentions she thrived, aware, even as she tended heavenward, that her grace was fleeting and her loveliness ephemeral.
unfolding, flowering, wilting, waning: this is nature's way, and, sometimes, it seems - sadly but simply - the way of the world.

places that i hide

she lifts her spectacles slightly.
"it's the sun," she says, feeling foolish: "it's the sun, y'know, and the wind. this always happens."
she stumbles a smile, and fumbles for some softness to smoothe the unbidden bits of sadness out of sight.
her companion, aware of her true story, nods, and they sip, under the espaliered
lindens, in the brightness, and the breeze.

neverending

there is darkness to be defied.
there is balance to be maintained.
there are pipers, palms proffered, to be paid.
and perhaps, perhaps, please, there will be deliverance in the light.

somebody else's song

you see:
there is more to this than meets the eye, a deeper self, a different story; sometimes insight - even truth - is just a tender touch away.