TO THE GIRL IN THE GREEN DRESS

"what I've been up to for the past month"

                                             I

 

I remember being breathless about this green

dress you just had to have because green

was the color of your Tandy roots and …

your eyes. How could I ever forget

the bewitching caracole of hazel behind the Matsudo knockoffs

gamboling through the autumn blaze of an Eastertide’s entrance.

The way you smiled whenever I peppered a conversation

with a cribbed line from one of my unknown odists --

the bird in the branches will cry for us dear --

as if words were an alien invasion you could warm to  

like I’d grown to appreciate the craftsmanship of Lagerfeld and

Galliano. All that stuff we needed, or thought we needed,

in order to survive the impetuosity of a world before

it eventually consumed us …. But then,

not yet. No, not yet, just then … still the rush

of a river coursing across a virgin canvas, the row of peas

waiting for four hands to strip, tease a laugh

from the browed bewilderment of where a leftover screw went --

when I couldn’t, wouldn’t complain. Not yet.

Because your voice still sang to me. Lulled

me into and through the breathless nights of an ache

to be with someone I thought ached too.

 

 

        II

 

Sunset, Vevey, Switzerland. Courbet’s stirring brush

of light. Sun, amber lemon, cotton wisps of white

mirroring off the fairy tale blue waters

of the fabled lake Chaplin had retreated to when

there were no more laughs in the hat. Why

we imagined this place the place to decamp our goodbyes

only God knows. Perhaps …

it was the Swiss malleability for bending intervals of time or

just the certain certainty the Helvetians would leave us

the space and silence to finalize the truce

over those ten days, and nights, the long week’s end --

our negotiation of pinot and polenta played out

amidst the seeds-siege … shades of other brokered disengagements.

Learning to laugh again, giving in to something, someone

other than the self’s loather, I’d leave what little malice I had

behind. She could have it all. What I wished, wanted,

would find somewhere, somehow beyond that place,

in the quiet spaces between lines, as yet

unwritten, but there -- waiting for me

in the lap of a new dawn’s unfolding verdancy.  

 

        III

 

After Zurich I’d read Voltaire in a different light.

Through my thirties, the dark decadent decade of enlightenment,

learning to love again became the mythical Eldorado,

wherever one was free to trade without having to barter

soles for a night’s nestling. The Westphalian curse

became less of a predicament, more akin to a Baedeker’s guide,

the single-minded lad’s romp about love’s nethers.

Candide’s simple-minded pursuit of the mare’s tail,

a perfect arse’s tale, the blueprint for my own humstrum

decennary descent into the depths of kitchens in search

of a rigatoni I could bake without the mess and fuss

of having to own an oven, never needing to rewind to find

Cunegonde. Where she went, whatever became of the green dress,

was never cause enough to refrain from tearing another page

once I’d committed its sights to memory. One continent’s savannahs

were another’s pampas, a mountain a mountain, a hill

to be climbed and left in the dust of the relentless trekker’s trek 

to swallow the grit of the world before the sun set on him.

 

        IV

 

Were there a way back, could I plow ahead?

Rewrite the second act? Find a persuasive narrative

to tell us how coming ashore would end

in a way that didn’t end in perusing closets,

divining commitment from appellations?

Unlike Monet recalling Camille,

the fancy of a girl in a chartreuse frock rushing off

through the late afternoon shadows evokes

no thoughts of regret, the great loss.

For the recovering dichromatic she is just a girl.

Some other wild-eyed boy’s proem

waiting the memory of his old man’s reflection,  

ache from having fed the pigeons too long.  

While I still remember being breathless,

the bewitching caracole of hazel is a memory

I no longer feel the urge to pull from the embers.

Though it’s possible, perhaps even probable,

slipping your shoulders from under the green

dress you just had to have because it reminded you

of your Tandy roots might …

but I burnt that dress the night you left me

weeping among the Helvetians. 

Ken e Bujold 

Reviews

[Betty Hermelee]

This is a great prose/poem... even though I had to look up some words...I got the meaning of most of it... of it...to me, you had a relationship so some time withe a girl in a green dress with green eyes...both of your moods seemed simpatico ..at least for a while...until you broke up ...after that it seemd that your life was a bit wild, which you referred to as the dark period..but then moments of her caught your mind's eye...
most importantly you seemed to grow and hope decended upon you..you were able to see a new beginnning
" i know longer feel to pull from the embers"... all through this amazing poem you weave the paintings of the masters so cleverly and with such grace....this really is a very personal journey...in time
Warmly, B

[Ken e Bujold]

Thanks B. your interpretation is pretty much spot on.

ken

[Betty Hermelee]

Glad to hear it Ken,
And you’re very welcome
Warmly, B

[Vol]

Ken,
What a lovely meander through time, and emotional growth and memory. An excellent way to spend a little time appreciating someone's life.
Vol

[Ken e Bujold]

Thanks V. Glad you enjoyed the write. Took just about everything I had. But I am very happy with its final outcome.

[Vol]

I listened to a lecture about time yesterday. A physicist said it is only our perception of time that makes it seem linear; that all of the past and all of the future is already there in its entirety. The me at twenty is still twenty and doing what me at seventy remembers... interesting stuff The me that is dead is just laying around in the dirt somewhere. And the me that began this comment is just now beginning to type...
Vol

[W. Barrett Munn]

Masterfully crafted. A real treat to read.