And the Lone Little Rose Smiles
~ by Lisa Ann Reilich
Salty ripple sea waves wash across
“Elephantie”, “Auntie Stone” — and the jagged
ledges no human yet has named — until
they are submerged, hidden and held in
water green blue and yellow-green
rockweed hands.
Here on this high mossy bank, insects I don’t yet
know the names of are making sounds that say
“Summer” — while the wind caresses the downy
hair on my forearms, the hollows of my worn
cheeks, the knots buried in my aching shoulders,
easing away last week’s cares, next year’s
worries with the warming kisses of right now.
One lone and little red rose waves bravely
in the breeze. Next to me, she smiles at
the sea below — and at me — her face
open, friendly — expectant
of ensuing play.
I sit on this weathered welcome worn bench
of wood and iron — Your girlish laughter, rising
deep from our shared years together, reaches my ears.
Glad memories play out before me of younger youngster
you, your found driftwood staff held powerfully firm in hand —
Queen of the Stones, Fairy of the Sea!
And I catch myself wondering if in these sparkling
ripples blanketing the shoreline of now if there is even
one particle within them that once caressed and held you or….
maybe — in a way I can’t fathom —
caresses and holds you still?
Then, I have to laugh — just a little — at the me
who looks for you outside myself in this familiar
yet strange sea below and beyond me, with
such questions, such imaginings
and wandering wonder …
For if it is true that these waves, lapping this year’s
heather before me, that held you in the time of then,
hold you still … why, then my little Fairy Queen,
the same is true of my own salty ocean within —
with its rhythmic ebb and flow, dark unnamed shores,
hidden caverns of my womb, pads of my fingers
once soft, now calloused with age and labor, filaments
of my hazel eyes which beheld the oceans of your deep
brown ones while you drank deeply from my breast — I
wiping your troubled brow clean til you laughed
with the wind and the moon, dangling your feet
from the silvery stars of our sing-song dreams.
Yes, nothing is lost, my Child!
At least at last I know —
Nothing is lost
that is
loved.
Oh, you — Fairy Queen of these Ocean
Stones, these Sparkling Waves — you are
forever held in all you — we — ever touched,
held in all that ever touched,
beheld and — Yes —
all that has loved,
still
loves
you.
The open-faced little rose nods and nods. She
smiles upon us all — playing and swaying
free in the harmonies, the melody,
the discord and concordance
of time’s entwining winds.
I, beholding the little lone rose, smile
and nod, too.
***
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