Meet Me Under The Ballerina Tree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been taught never to brag but now

I cannot help it: I keep

a beautiful garden, all abundance,

indiscriminate, pulling itself

from the stubborn earth: does it offend you

to watch me working in it,

touching my hands to the greening tips or

tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild

the living and the dead both

snap off in my hands?

The neighbor with his stuttering

fingers, the neighbor with his broken

love: each comes up my drive

to receive his pitying,

accustomed consolations, watches me

work in silence awhile, rises in anger,

walks back. Does it offend them to watch me

not mourning with them but working

fitfully, fruitlessly, working

the way the bees work, which is to say

by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure?

I can stand for hours among the sweet

narcissus, silent as a point of bone.

I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer

than your grief. It is such a small thing

to be proud of, a garden. Today

there were scrub jays, quail,

a woodpecker knocking at the white-

and-black shapes of trees, and someone’s lost rabbit

scratching under the barberry: is it

indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither,

and expurgate? Should I, too, not be loved?

It is only a little time, a little space.

Why not watch the grasses take up their colors in a rush

like a stream of kerosene being lit?

If I could not have made this garden beautiful

I wouldn’t understand your suffering,

nor care for each the same, inflamed way.

I would have to stay only like the bees,

beyond consciousness, beyond

self-reproach, fingers dug down hard

into stone, and growing nothing.

There is no end to ego,

with its museum of disappointments.

I want to take my neighbors into the garden

and show them: Here is consolation.

Here is your pity. Look how much seed it drops

around the sparrows as they fight.

It lives alongside their misery.

It glows each evening with a violent light.

 

 

Happiness by Paisley Rekdal, via 1 

 

 

 

 

The Outfit:

 

40s/50s Style Floral Chiffon Dress With Silk Lining: bought from the sale at Toast years ago

 

Vintage 70s Does 40s Blue & White Tilt Hat: from Ebay

 

Black Lace Peep Toe High Heels: old from New Look

 

 

 

The Soundtrack

 

Anita O'Day: All The Sad Young Men

 

 

Photographs taken by me, self portraits using the timer on my little digital camera. 

I've had an eye infection for over a month now, which means I'm allowed to wear neither mascara nor concealer to cover up those dark shadows under the eyes. But I've decided to think of the gorgeous ambassador for dark shadows, Jeanne Moreau, and celebrate my dark rings as seductive, maybe even intellectual looking....

 

 

Apologies I've not been visiting and commenting on your posts much lately due to overwork, looking forward to popping by your lovely blogs this weekend!