Photo by Zdeněk Macháček
For Unsplash+
Ephemera
After Christopher Marley's “Exquisite Creators” exhibit
Spearing the oil-sheen shell,
the feathered and gossamer wing,
the snail-curved scales,
Marley pins their still life
now dead, arrays in prismatic
patterns like Fibonacci,
recaptures their stained-glass flight.
Likewise the poet
with soot-toned pigment,
tethers to her page
the lizard’s sticky
underbelly, the crocodile’s
toothy torque, the torrid
dragon atop his hoard;
she caresses the cobalt
peacock’s throat, beguiles
the blue of Neptune’s ice;
she ensnares the swirling air
between the hummingbird’s beats,
the lovers’ lips,
the sojourning soul,
the survivor.
Resuscitating with her pen,
she releases her papery weights.
Provence
Walk with me through market
streets in gilded Saint-Rémy,
lulled along pebbled paths
lined with silver-
leaved olive trees.
We’ll watch a knobbed
woman weave baskets,
fill them with currants
and dappled sun.
My hair will be honey
in the autumn afternoon;
you’ll taste my ear
while I secret my hand
into hampers of coriander
and lavender, their grains
staining my skin
with scent.
My lips will lilt
rosé syllables as we stroll
past flower stalls — oui
monsieur, merci pour
les fleurs. A fern
infused fountain
will burble bonjour
as we sample smoked
sausages, artichokes
and art.
We’ll go there now,
on our watercolor
way, forsaking the angled gray
of winter. I’ll unwrap
this shivering wind and wear
September's cashmere kiss.
Fortis & Fugues
Chapter One: Discovery
Wrapped tight in a trench coat
like a hastily flung tent,
wooly scarf cosied
up my pinkened nose,
my scuffling boots
wend their way
round a windy winding
bend in Henley-on-Thames.
Past the black marble steps
of Oyster & Astor,
twenty or so cobbled paces, then hop –
over a suspicious rivulet
streaming from the Raucous
Rabbit’s crooked stoop
downward toward the shrunken
threshold of The Quizzical Fig.
Wind creaks an iron sign
that swings above a slanted
door to a shop dubbed
Fortis & Fugues Rare Books.
Tamping my feet, I tame my whipping
coat with one hand while wailing
hinges give way to the other.
As I push into the shop,
a tiny bell claxons
as the ceiling dips to greet
the still frenzied hairs,
blown upwards and sideways
from my forehead.
Behind the till, an old
woman sits so ensconsed
that she seems woven
into her threadbare
Louis Quinze chair.
Raising a papery
finger, she grunts “hallow,”
her bespectacled eyes unmoved
from a magnifying glass aimed
with triple lensed focus
toward a faded tome.
Chapter 2: Titles
Beneath the snuggling tea
toned ceilings, between Henry VIII
beams are shelves of all shapes
higgledy-piggledy running
around undulating walls.
Nestled upon them like sterling spoons,
tarnishing leather spines
flourish titles I studied in school:
Soliloquy, Ode, Discourse, Epic;
their names at home here, rather
than on the train or the tram,
where backlit bestsellers
like Click-Bait, Hashtag, Scrolling and Trolling
fluoresce our faces.
As I tug my scarf free
from my chin, my eyes dart
then dawdle from book
to book basking in their epigraphs.
Cherished childhood monsters beckon:
Bloodcurdling, Entombed, Macabre.
Tucked inside a sleepy niche I spy
Susurration, Lassitude, Murmur.
Nearby in a pell-mell pile, Percussive
and Tintinnabulation are plopped
atop Rat-a-tat-tat.
Unhurriedly my fingertips
trace the braille of flaking leather.
My lungs languidly inhale
the fresh staleness of slowly dying
books, lulled by their faint notes
of almond and vanilla, until –
in gilded gothic letters I glean
Governess, Attic, Lunatic, Incinerate.
Lifting and unclosing a book,
I stop –
spellbound by bound browning
pages spilling Brontë.
Chapter 3: Immersion
The current of words swirls
around me, blissfully ensnaring
my senses, dragging my mind
in its undertow and depositing
me on the edge of a heath
into a massacred topiary garden.
Up a slight hill, the back side
of a brick manor house looms
and I eavesdrop as a man and woman
argue on the stone steps. She is slight
and pale yet fiery
in the weakening light.
As they move, I silently follow
as a ghost,
into the candlelit mansion,
so overly upholstered
and tapestried that the sound
of every footfall is swallowed.
A shrill chime interrupts the scene.
Are they summoning a servant? But no —
It’s a brassy bell above a door
that I hear with my physical ear,
not my inner listening –
and I am dredged
toward the surface,
emerging, still dripping
in story
into the shop.
Clutching the book to my chest,
I scurry to the till to trap my treasure.
Fidgeting, I rewrap my scarf
and tighten my trench
while the old woman’s crinkly fingers
envelop my book
in kraft paper and twine
at the speed
of tectonic
shift.
Then, heaving the door with one hand
and bracing my book with the other,
I plunge into the twilit street,
the bell’s ring hushed
as the tilted-top door swings shut.
My boots clip-clop on the cobbles
of their own accord
as the wuthering winds
while me away into the moors
of my imagination.