Gathering

I gather trinkets now. Indulgences. Now, at last, when my life grows late. 

A silver ring like a fox; earrings like silver roses – though why I need them I don’t know, knowing we can take nothing with us. Nothing, perhaps, except our memories. 

Will you remember me? Now, I know you do; but always?

‘Shall we meet again?’ I asked the seer, soon after you died. He looked, it seemed, into some kind of space, at once inner and cosmic. After a few minutes, said, ‘Nothing surer.’ Then, after another pause, ‘But not in this time.’ 

Well, duh, I didn’t want to encounter you next as a new infant and I an old lady!

Then again, I want always to encounter you. Whichever way you come, whatever body you’re dressed in. 

There is no body you inhabit now. (Well, not as far as I know.) There is the one I remember … in which to dress your soul … your soul which I also remember.

The trinkets are simply symbols. I wish they might also be signals. Do you receive them, in the ether somewhere?

Symbols. Signals. 

Sigils?

I fill them full of intent.

Exploring the zuihitsu form: 'following the brush' – or the movement of the imagined brush.

That Childhood Game

 

I remember the huge puff

that blew the dandelion seeds 

all 

off

to fly away on the air, 

and you had to

get the lot

in one whoosh.

I can’t 

remember why – 

any of it. 

Something

about love … ?

Do you think 

I’m getting 

old?

A quadrille for dVerse's Q251 Light Burst of Air

(A quadrille is a poem of 44 words excluding title. And including one compulsory word, in this case 'puff'.)

Guadalupe

The Guadalupe was green. 

Soft green, as if cloudy.

Not transparent, but secret,

glowing with inward light.

I sat with Anne

on large, flat stones

extending into the water.

The Guadalupe was green.

We watched three tall black birds 

forage, from stones in the centre.

We spoke of poetry, Reiki, 

friendship, and being blessed

to live in places of beauty.

The Guadalupe was green,

almost turquoise that night

alongside the wooden veranda

where our restaurant table

was full of new friends, good talk,

red wine, and feasting.

The Guadalupe was green.

He swung his truck to a stop, unplanned, 

for a river walk in the sun.

We laughed with a little boy, and 

a small happy dog … pretending we could be 

always ... knowing we could not.

The Guadalupe was a shade of green

I’ve never, anywhere else, seen matched.

Stranger, I longed to merge

with the depths and bends

of that river, to stay connected

forever. Perhaps I did.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United's Friday Writings #235, where we're invited to write about a body of water that holds a special place in our heart. I'm a river lover: mainly the Tamar in Launceston, Tasmania, where I grew up, and the Tweed in Northern Rivers, NSW, where I now live. But I've also fallen in love with some rivers in places I've only visited, most notably the dramatic Urubamba in Peru, and the mystical Guadalupe in Texas, USA.