for Peggy

For Peggy Chestnutt ~ may your spirit dance in eternal bliss

 

 

Shared Summer Leaves

. 

 .

Plot keeps us moving

conflicts, obstacles

from concept to theme.

Show of our qualities,

characteristic strategies

how people change

dramatically, comedically,

through relationship or revelation

or how we resolutely refuse

to change despite ardent

catalysts.

Sitting in your kitchen

drinking wine and sharing plotlines

leading to the lives we share

here in safe eternity

I feel your joys, moments of doubt,

your poignant tragedies and resilient reclamations

Your brilliant smile, contagious laugh,

ebullient embrace carry me beyond

enduring sorrows.

A fallen sparrow nurtured,

a flower coaxed to glory,

a simple girlhood story spanning wars,

historic empathies.  Cuttings

cultured from days before language

continue chains

of synchronicity, plotlines leading me

to find

our brief exchange

Strands of interactive dna

move us forward into more complete

meeting.

 

***

 

Sitting here, in the cluttered fan-cooled kitchen

while a storm-brewing wind rustles

through the garden below.

The California wine tastes tart and sticky.

The wine tells me stories, you know.

It’s the redness and the way the light reflects

against the glass, along with the drug.

Hearing voices in the silent darkness,

I listen without question.

As the night slowly falls,

I envision fantasies of former lives:

Glistening ball gowns and a smiling orange moon

in a starlit sky appear in my mind’s eye

along with

jugglers and dancers.

A fortune-telling maiden in glorious rags

places cards upon a table:

“The red one is Death; the white one is Honour;

the green one is Fortune; the blue one is Love.”

She lives in a log cabin with a unicorn and goat

who feed and clothe her and keep her safe.

There are many things I need to know

and few to tell me.

So I listen to the wine’s stories.

I wish it were my garden, below.

I would go out barefoot and gather ripe vegetables

under the moon,

breathing deeply of the cool night air.