[start where you are III] – delve

Tags

2014, being, books, breathing, compassion, detail, emptiness, eyebrow, eyes, faces, feet, fingers, green, hair, hills, identity, laptop, legs, letting go, Lewes, library, lime, looking, mouth, muse, phone, portrait, profile, reading, settling, sitting, sound, speech, stretch, sun, Sylvia Plath, table, talking to myself, thinking, time, travelling, windows, woman, world

prologue:

start where you are
envelopped in the world

so do I pry open the locale
to see how I am found

but careful not to crack the world
to see where I am located

… no, that’s not it

not prying open
but you don’t become stuck

in matter or location (and neither
become lost in daydream or script)

rather

you look where you are and
receive it with compassion and all the detail

flowing in without resistance and
whenever I evince judgement – ‘thinking’ –

let it sink back into view like
brushed paint onto a second coat

never located
always travelling

scene 1:

three women in the quieter
study area of the library

delve

                                a cough when I sat to join the table
                                an ‘excuse me’ a look up a wink –
                                was that a wink? – she reads lime highlights
                                and Evian, arms crossed prop the book like
                                a lap top over the edge of the table
                                a book on museum ethics awaiting
                                her right eyebrow crooked naturally to read

                                unplugged, but she has a good hour
                                on the central table, she plinks and
                                brinks open and sits still as a hill range
                                receding only the corner of her mouth
                                and lip-emote and deft at the text
                                the clear green eyes flick and decide
                                at the corrections to be made

                                legs crossed ankle boots
                                foot pointing circling retrieving
                                boot cuffs clapping slightly behind
                                while reading, then stopped when editing
                                round chin profile, raggedy hair
                                spun in constant bun brow raise –
                                mess of poised fingers work the keyboard

interlude:

                                I delved awhile into ‘Stars Over
                                The Dordogne’ – falling
                                presentiment – and looked up

scene II:

my boot-circler was gone, just gone –
I didn’t see her leave – was she even there?

but the sun had moved window-
tinted across their faces

one had shiny hair and breathed
regularly head-collapsed

the other placed her book flat on the table
keep the sun off her face on her ponytail

scene III:

during ‘The Rival’ unplugged was called
she had to go to Nero’s to check her link

(library censorship – smirk in her lilt)
she stretched long and distant …

… then gathered and left

dénouement:

I wrote the scenes I checked the dictionaries
time to go, ‘oh’ she said tapping her phone

‘time flies …’ I said, ‘yes, but I feel I haven’t
got anywhere’; ‘but you’ve been here all along;