“Sylvan historian,
who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our
rhyme:”
from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats
When Aunt Yvonne takes down her hair,
waves crash tenderly upon her shoulders,
mingling black and grey.
She smiles like a painting,
as if she knows secret sorrow
or infinite longing -- or abundant
joy.
You might
think you could share her secret
if you looked without blinking
and listened between the brush strokes
and her words.
You would be wrong.
You ask questions and she answers,
her brush speaking sparks,
her voice singing syllables
like tones tinkling between piano keys,
dropping into twilight like evening
dew.
She invites you in with her slow laugh
and when she pauses to punctuate,.
you lean into her secret.
until she starts strumming again
her black hair afire with diamonds.
Still you
stay, watching her strum
drawing her on with your questions.
as she drew you in with her music.
She whispers sweetly
of how the weeping willow fills the window.
She paints
poetry with her brush
gesturing at the rain barrel scented
with rose petals, autumn leaves, pine cones.
You hear the secret approach
and draw it nearer with listening nods.
She hums calmly of cool evenings
and brushes nature’s scents into her
hair,
tempting hummingbirds to nestle there.
Her curls crackle like fluttering wings
that might have lifted her
if she desired or needed flight.
She reached a hundred and stopped.
Throwing her wild hair over one shoulder,
Aunt Yvonne let her fingers part it in
the center
then took up her comb to shape it upward
binding, twisting round her fingers
ninja-like —
quickly and silently and softly --
deceptively demure, dangerously subdued.
Aunt Yvonne
has told her secrets
but you must have blinked.
You imagine a bit of birdsong,
escaping with each unraveled tendril
as she drifts about her day.
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