Mairi watched Bravo depart. Growing smaller. And smaller. Just a star now. Extinguished in the great black coldness. An ocean, ink for water. Murky as the future. Left and left. Gauche feet. Gut gouache. Seeds in the belly. A growing hunger. Ambition driving rain of duct. Between and between. A landscape pocked with the unfamiliar. Moon barren. Dark side cold."Your transport is ready."
"Thank you," said Mairi, the voice, her voice sounding distant as if she was overhearing a conversation. "How long to Arc'teryx?"
"Three weeks."
She followed the drone through a sea of metal, of voices unknown, whispers in winter snow, the raven hungry, the dead buried. A walk not unlike one taken a lifetime ago, maroon cloak pulled tight against the wind, hair like flags in the open air, nose pert, alive with the breath of nature amidst The Garden of Eternal Falling in the house of Chatelaine.
__________
In her private quarters aboard the transport, Mairi watched the liquid fireworks of the universe slip by. Her chest felt like the nebula before her eyes, mysterious and seductive, beauty pure, as a hand leading. She drank wine, red to match her lips, the crimson of life, of blood, of the wine that warmed the turmoil within; as if a furnace she stoked with each sip, twirling tongue, imagining two where there was just one. She could not read. Too many thoughts barricading the entrance to the written word, pages feeling old, of a story known, static, dusty when air she needed, like a swimmer, like a baby born, to gulp and grasp the invisible tether. To pull this life into her lungs knot by knot, to fill as a balloon and rise to the light. She sighed. The only sound. Her only companion.
__________
She closed her eyes in the silence and began to float. Her cloak unbuttoned, hinged on shoulders bare, a curtain to the ground. Knees delicate and denuded, bent and spread with intent; cool air as a whisper flowed upon the river of dusk between her pale mountains erect, ripe of aching cherry. He had taught her to go inward, to travel the path of those electrical impulses, to caress and massage in the way of dreams sweet. Each touch a finger, of tongue educated in the ways of solitude and water, of clear glass filling and emptying, of that twin gateway of softness before the moat of orgasmic falling, falling as leaves, as petals, as the sun that rises must fall with a kiss of the horizon, dipping, melting, glistering out into the nothingness of abject surrender to a night drunk on stars, afire in the pen of meteors castings the warm flickering glow of a smolder burning beyond sight.
___________
In the silence of her cabin, skin bare, breathing the view, floating as on a calm lake. She exhaled. Lips full, blushed, agape. Limpid eyes of glass. Hands drained as legs tremulous in effort released the ecstasy of creation. Hair damp of exertion essayed. She eased into sleep deep as the cavern of her sorrow, as the cavity of her hope.
3 comments:
Glorious image today, like a cinnabar vessel. Thank you for your (almost) daily gifts.
You are very welcome Lime. And your kind words are most appreciated. :-)
Mairi watched Bravo depart.
In the simplicity of this statement, the breadth of its mournfulness expands. In the space between what we know, what has been suggested and what is written here, every ache she must feel watching Bravo depart is felt (imagined) watching her. By the omission of elaborative detail in regards to her thoughts and emotions, the scene reinforces reflection, and response, in other words in leaving room, as it follows the scene before it and in the watching, in the departure, in the mention of Bravo, home, family, now, and the only remaining fragment of home then (Hyneria), these four temperate words are profoundly stirring. Superb in how it happens as we read, Just a star now, dramatic in the shortness, engaging in the way that your poetry does, graphically. I particularly love the language and imagery of Extinguished in the great black coldness. An ocean, ink for water. The walk remembered, correlated, if I remember correctly was started upon once before, in this same intriguing manner, so that it becomes a promise repeated of a story yet to be told, arousing all the more curiosity for who is to say further revelations will ever be made. :-) This is what I love perhaps most about the story, about the characters, the allowance for privacy, as in life, not every detail will be known nor is it needed or even desired, yet still we can know their hearts. Mairi in particular, the chatelaine, has revealed very little in spoken word of her life on Hyneria, but in act has shown her measure. So very lovely is the liquid fireworks of the universe as is the passage about wine, furnace stoked. Of barriers that deny, and the workings of mind (of sensitive soul) that led to pages feeling old. And She sighed. The only sound. Her only companion. The poetry of word as well as of eye and mind and heart that authored deep as the cavern of her sorrow, as the cavity of her hope. So beautifully written. This entire chapter reverberates in the wish to soothe, to comfort, as reader as we enter upon the chapter watching her watching Bravo disappear the desire is bred, enhanced by the futility of that desire, through her efforts to soothe herself. Artful. Moving.
Exceedingly.
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