searingedrock

The limes hanging in bunches outside the fence.  The bird sitting trilling on the electric wire.  Waiting for a taxi; overhead parrots screech, flying home for the evening.  The rain like warm wet kisses.  The dog lying flat, belly exposed.  The sunset like melting pink watercolours, swirling with the infinite grace of a moment.

The hills like arms, embracing the ocean which is blue, bluer than dreams; and the sky above it like friends, no, like family.  The Trinity.

Sitting in the garden in a metal foldout chair holding cup of hot water, hugging legs up under me and staring unblinkingly at moon and moon at me.

Red-rainbow wisps of cloud cover and frame partially pregnant moon in midnight sky.

18 years old, stretched out on balcony with cigarette, watching silent forest mountain and moon, two old friends and me.

Everlong vision of two children holding hands in the dark, looking up and out at black inky ocean and glowing trail of moon.

A certain unending searching peace.  Eyes are shining balls of pearl, glowing infinite mindless wisdom of eons of suffering and effort, and here and there a triumph, a knowledge that you have conquered at least that little thing within, that small fear, that quivering unfamiliarity.  Gazing at the patience of scarred millennia, the dogma of astrophysics.  The movement of one step, and then another, lungs that expand, heart that beats.  The rhythm of will.

wide the wing span of the birds floating

short the legs of the youngling

in pantalons and sun-hat

rough the waves that tumbled, tumbled

threw me in your arms like a body-stone

I felt your rough head, it did not feel like any head

I had known before, it was different

caught in white foam and falling-first I,

then we

Flashback number two (I'm trying not to write with a purpose in mind anymore): 

Waiting after hours in highschool; by then we had changed to the new uniform used today; navy and white pinstriped blouse, navy pencil skirt with box pleats, incredibly hard to make shorter as we all wanted to do as it ended mid-calf.  A new offensive by management against the tendency towards sluttishness.  Instead we rolled skirts up at the waist, making big bumps over our waists from the fabric.  The shirts bore a monogrammed pocket on the right breast which, after many washes, grew threadbare and eventually fell off.  They made us wear navy socks since we couldn't keep our white socks white enough. 

I waited in the courtyard by myself, school emptied of people and simply now a shell, surrounded by beige banisters and the statue of Mary leaning over sorrowfully.  There was someone upstairs in the theatre playing Michael Nyman's The Promise, very fast, very hard.  The sound echoed around the courtyard and it seemed as if there was an opening up of something there as I stood, small and still, sneakers scuffed and the asphalt pitch still wet from the rain that had fallen earlier.  Everything pointed to an ancient painful newness that tore softly until one couldn't gasp but only watch, afraid to move or change what was happening but at the same moment knowing this, itself, is change.

The music teacher Mr. Henry walked by, stopped, listened.

"What piece is that?"

I answered him, told him that the music shop around the corner sells the sheet music.  He listened a bit longer, turned and said to himself, "I think a few chords are off there, I'll need to get it."