Sleeping Beauty Awakened

From the passing bus the brick home
on the boulevard's corner seems asleep
eyes flipped the mini-blinds turned up
... a hundred years pass
the noises of birth & death in a two-step
while sleeping beauty casts off the down
comforter and looks at the arab in her bed

suddenly the cat demands his freedom
the dog sneaks out the back gate
the child, in her room, wads grandma's
unused fabrics around her in role after role

beauty does not wake the arab
she has her own great white to pursue
and it has been one hundred years now
She dons her rob & slips back
into the real world

the Ay-rab is secretly awake
in fact he hasn't slept now, for 100 years.
His kiss did not wake her, but he
would not give up. He listens to the child
speaking rhymes. He feels better.
He remembers the whale's
terrible, glorious attack.
the Ice breaks in his heart
... beauty, beauty, beauty

a hundred years before she climbed aboard the bus
john lennon died and she sent the arab away
the south fifth street thunders across the boulevard
in the sandy soil the great white sleeps
even today

From the manuscript Approaching Candlemas in a Sports Car, Poems on the subject of need in a damaged universe. This poem was written after Becky Bradway left me. She is posited as sleeping beauty here. This refers to her avoiding the subject of her father's abuse for so many years. We lived in a house on the corner of 10th Street and Bryn Mawr in south Springfield. Years before we bought that house (1987) Becky lived on South 9th Street and often took the bus to SSU. It ran up 10th, right past the house and she imagined living in that house. Becky left me in 1993, so she lived there for almost six years. I lived there another six years before moving in 1999.

In that house Paige had a trunk full of fabric pieces that Connie Bradway had bought and never got around to using. Paige made them into innumerable costumes. Lots of fun there. I'm the arab here and yes it is meant to speak to Captain A-hab and the great white whale that signified the ambition of ego and death. I did love Becky, but by then she had awakened and there was no love for me in this picture. I accepted that, because one has to accept that you can't make someone love you. Either they do, or they don't. I have come to believe that Becky never really loved me, or maybe anyone. But I know that Kimberly Britton loves me as no one has ever loved me. And conversely, I love her in a way I have never loved before. Love reciprocated is far greater than a mere sum. It is a thing that grows, a song becoming light, the breath of the Lady in the sail of this existence. There I go, mixing my metaphors again.