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Without my stone companions I’d be madder than my husband. Our son’s mortal pining left scars sharp as flints in a glacier’s womb.
My body traces a daughter’s loss, too like dark veins in marble. Yet this gallery of sculpted ghosts turned purgatory into hibernation.
Pacing like a snow queen among Paulina’s collected treasures I pause in wonder at peerless Hera flaunting her branch of immortality.
I often finger Victory’s pleated robe ruffled feathers wind-borne by freedom jealous of her headless state — no thoughts to disturb her mind.
Even in sleep, I see the caryatid’s slow smile framed by lengthy plaits certain as Hercules of bearing her burden forever.
I touch Venus’s cool thigh to know this hand is warm, compare our breasts my unwilling breath barely perceptible and I’d swear it’s she that moves.
Now Paulina says my daughter breathes in her penitent father’s embrace, so these years of aesthetic nurture become a rehearsal for my rebirth.
Fearing our theatrical coup be deemed witchcraft we agree music will conjure magic and serve as my cue to move.
Dim the lights, Paulina the stone stands ready to speak.
I want to write a poem about that girl the one we picked up on a mountain road miles from anywhere, in Lesotho.
First seeing her slim figure striding coloured blanket flapping loose an everyday scene there.
I’d try to capture the serene smile as she climbed into the back seat waving us on with long fingers.
No language in common smiles kept us going. Just a local hitch-hiker you’d think.
Yet when she asked us to stop — leaping out beside a few large-horned cows that browsed the roadside her cane raised to herd them — she flashed naked thighs cut off by brief denim shorts.
I’d tell how as we drove off her sensuality still filled the car.
Waking in the small hours sleep as slippery as a shoal he re-lives his old routine: leaving home before stars fade crunch of shingle under waders father loading fish-boxes brother checking the engine granddad greasing winches quick sips of thermos tea before the clinker-strong trawler glides between groynes ploughs over grey surge.
Bow nosing toward the horizon his night’s eye checks compass points store-boxes moored close in lobster-pots on buoys out further then his sea-chart memory unfurls deep water constellations crevasses scoring chalk reefs a shipwreck tilted on seabed pebbles massive sandstone clusters marking the moment to pay out nets till the swell and rock of his bed haul sleep aboard once more.
The Paph Sanderianum orchid, known as the Jungle Warrior, blooms only once in a decade.
After a day of fuses and sockets the electrician retreats each evening to his greenhouse’s humid embrace.
His dynamic protégées flaunt their frilly skirts flash freckled tongues between glossy lips luminous wings sparking magenta yellow and white into the gloom.
He moves shyly among them speaks softly of light, time, beauty and inevitable fading.
Every night of this tenth year a last check on his ‘jungle warrior’: the torch’s beam reveals one elongated bud has just split exposing a coil of red ribbons.
Days later, a neighbour finds him earthed on a dark bed his pale face lit with eternal joy crimson tendrils wired into the shock of white hair like a classical hero.
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