Satellites
By jvriesema
- 514 reads
In iceland , in the winter, the wind would echo like improvisational jazz, echoing through the vent above my kitchen stove. Sound would undulate and whisper cascading the rooms in the house with all of its compositions . Lying awake, sipping a glass of wine, the wind would whisper through the snow outside of my window like angel wings flying across a twilight sky. The warmth and pauses of dreams still convoluting of people asleep though I am still awake, conversed with the clock upon the wall. The night sky danced in green and turquoise and remembrances of sunset colors while I wrote you poems from across the bay. The lighthouse would search through the winter cold for love and life and warmth of fire in a stove glowing with your dreams. I stared into the night and watched my lace curtains dance in equations of the universe, their pattern finding you through blue light.
Unable to sleep, I poured myself into compositions i played upon my piano, the keys glowing in lamplight from my windowsill. I stared into the night and played the song of the wind that I knew inside my soul though noone else heard my fingers strike the keys. I walked into the kitchen transitioning from creativity to the sound of the teakettle whistling with its insistence of being attended to. I looked outside my window and watched the snow make love to the wind and wished you here with me in the night. Your eyes ran through my soul,and carried the heart of my music, my art , with you. When i first saw you, I paused and felt the world echo through time, your eyes holding my gaze from a lamplit room. I stood frozen in time and waited for sound to find itself through the ribbon of your eyes. Winter fell through frozen ponds, and still I painted upon my canvas that music found its way to the beginning. I watched you pause in the winter of the day and felt morning cascade over me like water from a summer rain. Your sagas wove their way through your sweater knitted for you from someone else's love.
In that night, I grabbed my coat, climbed the hill while my tea seeped in a porcelain cup, looked through my telescope into a sky that danced with so many stars while the wind encrcled me in its protective embrace, and felt you surrounding me with something I could not yet explain. I walked back down the hill with my telescope slung upon my shoulder , the path laden with lava rocks and moss .Your elves and stories of mythical trolls made me smile as I pressed on against the face of the wind. Then I stopped midway to my house and wished you here. My hiking boots remained frozen to the spot as I thought I heard your mythicial elves laugh softly from beneath the caves of the rocks that had fallen from the birth of your land. I pulled my coat even tighter to my soul and made my way to the light from my kitchen window, the lace in the window comforting my heart. Up the flight of stairs, my telescope resounded against the balustrades, my feet numb from winter's cold. I opened the door and felt the gust of warmth from the radiators. Their journey was so long through pipes that drew the life from steam vents within a volcano long sleeping in pools of blue sulphur water. The colours were so pure, so unimaginebly blue, that my brush would stop in mid-air teasing my canvas into memories. I stared at the clock ticking away its minutes in logical fashion; 2 A.M and yet I still am awake when your world sleeps. You are so far away tossed in your eiderdown breathing gently into a dream state.
. I gathered my tea which had been seeping for more than 10 minurtes; chamomile and lavender filling my nostrils, and walked through rooms filled with pottery and children's toys. My daughter stlill slept , her face smiling from dreams of dolls and teddy bears. I gently closed her door and walked further down the hall to my studio where my canvas cajoled me into colours of prussian blue and the rose of forgotton blooms. Softly, jazz played , while I picked up my brush already laden with paint from a moment of emotion and thought of your eyes. Then time flew away into 10 oclock morning hours while I painted the wind, the light, the sound of your voice echoing within me. Jazz softly played, a harp folding into a dome upon an orchestrated life that is yours; notes following your every word. You stared into an ordinary day and somehow i came upon your ordinary day, and I think that you knew as i knew,that our stumbling caused us to fall. I watched the snow chase the infinite, and i thought of you wearing your sweater knitted with love from another, light falling from your thoughts, your daydreams chasing the possibilities of "more" .Was it more time needed? Was it more thought? Was it logic that prevailed? I opened and closed my hands perhaps out of futility, perhaps out of exasperation, perhaps out of your silence,and felt the equations of life and love flow through my fingers unto the floor into a beam of grey morning light.
My daughter awakened from her gaelic name and ran into my studio embracing me with the awareness of a new day, morning still following her like a favored blanket. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she pointed to the kitchen awaiting the smells of breakfast cooking from pots of oatmeal and spoonfuls of sweet sugar ribbons. We raced into the kitchen, her slippered feet skidding across the floor, her braids flying through the air, and sat at the wooden table to platefulls of oatmeal and ribooned coloured sugar. Her conversation flew from her dreams of unicorns and elves . Her feet never touched the floor as plates rattled and coffee was brewed amid her words of "you know what then happened?" We stared out at the grey sky, the lace curtain gently hesitating before the wind chased it into a dream. She pointed to the sky, to the smoke from the mountain, and with a very serious look upon her face told me that the dragon lived there, and that he was sleeping. I asked her if dragons ate oatmeal too, and she frowned in pensive thought, and laughed and said, ," no. silly mommy, they eat moss and rocks and driink the waves from the sea."
Bookbags were then gathered from the hallway bench and school buses were waiting in the wind like patient butterflies for their young passengers. I looked down at her discarded slippers and ribbons from her braids strewn across the hall in patterns of mathematics, and saw her climb the steps of a big yellow butterfly, and go off to a world of pencils and of construction paper thoughts. At three o'clock, she would return, smelling of pencils and crayons and drawings with stars, and tell me of books of lore filled with elves and trolls and spelling and numbers written in precise columns. In the meantime ,I gathered plates from breakfast and empty cups from steaming hot coffee and cocoa and placed them in a sink filled with hot soapy water leaving them to dream in bubbles. I painted more canvases that day drawing the cobalt from blue and the green from forgotton forests.
Then at exactly three,P.M ,, the yellow butterfly stopped in front of my door and my child clamboured out running into the house, bookbag thrown on the floor , jacket lying on the bench. Then at the table, the day was told of school and lore and imaginations run wild in between mouthfuls of yogurt and slices of honey- laden toast. We gathered our coats and walked to the place where she believed a family of elves lived, the wind buffeting the seagulls above our heads. In great solemn formality, she placed a piece of honey laden toast and a lava rock in front of their door and whispered a chant from so long ago in ancient times. Then we walked back through soft moss that held our feet firm. We spoke then of ribbons and music and books that always held the possibility of imagination.; your eyes always following our footfall through the wind., forever through the wind.
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Comments
A really wonderful word
A really wonderful word picture - but was there a reason for the first huge paragraph?
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hah! I think we both meant we
hah! I think we both meant we thought short paragraphs would make it much more readable!
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I loved this evocation of
I loved this evocation of Iceland, wish I was there. At first I thought it was a prose poem and then it fell into a prose structure, so hard to read - paragraphs please. :)
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