Sunday, September 5, 2010

"Her words against the winds."

Elegant and charming, she tilts her dainty head at the perfect angle for the sunlight to catch the golden specks of her playful, brown eyes. Laughing in the face of a threatening cloud, she turns slowly and walks down a windy foot path. The light breeze caresses her neck and plays with her hair, as if trying to seduce her in to following it, wherever this free wind may take her. The seduction ceases, or is at least ignored, at the sight of her other half, sprawled out on a picnic rug, one arm over his pushbike and the other free to take her needy hand.

And this is the way the world should end.

If time was to stop forever.

Like the free wind, time moves too slowly, too quickly, too lightly, too roughly. One can never be sure of the wind.
She finds herself again, years later, successful, in love and as beautiful as ever. The only thing she has ever questioned was the playful wind's plan for her. She had surrendered to its seduction many times, but had also ignored it in favour of more earthly and stable delights. What would have happened if she kept following? Allowed herself to become nothing but a flippant feather, for the wind to do with what it will?
These are the times, these are the choices.

To fly or fight, to follow or stay.

She is, inevitably, happy and satisfied but has always kept one eye on the wind, and one hand open for its frivolous charm to take.

Marianne Moore, Three Fifty-Four