Carrie held the book upon her lap, that broad blue billowing expanse
like the free span of ocean waters horizon to horizon
and the book upon it there securely, accommodating,
like a salty veteran of the watery ways and
roads yet did it
rest buoyant, and move in contentment, and flow, and raise
its creamy sail as Carrie turned a page
fearlessly and garnered
more than she gave in berthing the blocky leather
held gatherings in her pink cupped hand
a pink shell upon the blue.
Carrie
turned a page, and a smile took her lips molding
them into a secret, a pleasure, and only briefly
held and only to increase their pleasure delay
heightening curiosity like
little children they inched and twitched forward here, to the side there,
fingers plucked, shoulders flicked.
"Oh
do get on," Rose snapped.
Elaine
beamed encouragement to Carrie who did not
need it knowing Rose and
Elaine. Knowing Esme(e) she
did not dare to meet that gaze. She
set a pink finger to the milky leaf blank to
me and spoke in voice different, yet expected,
yet known intimately, those tones and rhythms
of the storytellers. "The
Vulcain Cricket is said to live a 1000 years,"
quoth Carrie.
She
paused. She looked up from the page.
Tellers
of tales like vaudeville acts and courses of
commedia dell'arte, intricate novels and sagas
sung by night's choruses did not begin with
the best. They heightened, they drew out, they
savored like lovers more than banqueters
and no 1 could ever pretend that
tellers of tales did
that for money or got nothing from it,
nothing more than pennies or pouches of gold coins.
How
cruel were they? I
wondered. I hesitated on the edges of the women
of the rug. Mistaken.
I must be perhaps
weary perplexity
drew unfamiliar lines about them ropes
round me defining me binding
me to them to their
tale to this tale forthcoming 'twas
not cruel but a heightening of
the gift given for love for what more
of love can there be than
that 1 might offer bright scarves to the wind delighting
all who could see.
All
who could see.
Receiving
their hushed stillness which was a kind of
reverence for the tome and the sun that fell
across it and the blue and her voice Carrie
began.
But
I saw her eyes as she lowered them and they
were cornflower blue brilliant orbs of vibrant hue filled
not with light, precisely, nor with visions,
exactly, but they captured each uniquely yet
so closely sharing and zygotic the rich enthralling
illuminations of flowers, flowers, of all colors
crowding close her intense blue kaleidoscopic
embrasures iris, daisy, rose, camellia,
violet, dahlia, hollyhock, larkspur, poppy,
periwinkle, foxglove, foxglove and
gardenia crowding, rustling, breathing, sharing
Carrie's blue embued eyes, Carrie's
blue perfused bouquet eyes.
Carrie
began.