Arose In Winter

i.m.  Pauline D. (1922-2011)

She had filled every role,
from child to grandmother,
from partner to friend,
from advocate
to the glue,
which holds people together,
if they will allow it to do so.

People mattered most:
family,
community,
the joys of fellowship;
the affirmation,
and meaning, of life—
a gracious and flourishing tree.

Time went on,
slowing movement,
but never dulling sense
in those matters
that meant most.

But, winter had come
and her tree
had long been losing
its precious leaves;
all her friends
were gone.

Home and place
had contracted,
from mansion to house,
to now a compartment,
too small to contain
the grandness or the minutiae
of her experience, much less
the people, places and things
that had been her life
and meaning.

The last leaf on her tree,
she realized.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for,
she said.

Though brought low by illness,
still was she able
to feel her feet
roaming the beaches
that had long memorized
her footfalls and
to hear the voices of those
whom she loved,
and who loved her.

Systems failed, though,
body resistant to the will.

Take me home,
she said.

From a final comfort
in her own bed,
she let herself go;
a well-loved, well-lived leaf,
the very last on her tree,
she let herself go,
to drift downward
to the ground.

Take me home,
her spirit breathed.

She was answered
by a breath of wind
that raised her up,
a small fanfare of fluttering free,
and carried her off to the sea.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Phasing

Tired.

Never too tired to read, though.

Propped up, in bed.

Sampling. Three books, this time.

Words rise from the pages, to etch their similar forms on the slate of my internal cognition apparatus. They flow silently, vicariously. Descriptions and dialogue become a soundscape, as they pass through the forest of neurotransmitters that compose the functionality of my singular body electric.

There is shadow life beyond these pages, their margins and my peripheral vision, internal and external. 

Intermittently, tropes rise up, from time now and time immemorial—melding into a timelessness and tirelessness—oscillating and calling for my extra notice. In my brain, on the page, and within the seamless flow of silent, but sounding, semiotic pragmatica, they arise. 

Meanwhile, sleep has sent out its call for me, as well. The filling moon pulls at the biosystems, urging them to fall into sync with the trope grid, and join the music of the spheres.

Fall, surrender; let go unto rest.

Words on the page, as well as words on the mind, waver. Tired eyes, sampling, waver.

Night of mystery.

For, through some tiny fissure, something extra comes. Working through the maze of sign upon verisign, word upon very word, singing through the thicket of being, non-being, reflection, abstraction, wave and particle—perhaps on the cusp of change from potential to kinetic movement—it comes.

Not on the page, not on the lucid mental slate, not of moon nor ocean nor body—but, of some other.

Some other—not of my life or moment—joining my perception.

A message. A descant of some sort, a harmonic attachment, perhaps in syncopation to my rising melodic waves, causing my notice. 

A message. I reach in, and it retreats. I pursue it, but cannot find the thread to grasp. Shy, it slips further away, back into its hidden fissure. 

Wait! Don't go! I want to perceive you!

But, it slips again, even farther away, and in perfect reflection, I slip away into the repose that has been awaiting my necessary arrival.

And, as I go, I make this covenant between the hidden music and myself, as we retreat in opposing directions: I will find you, I will hold you; I will understand.

We will yet sing together, sonorous and simpatico.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen