Vessels

Looking at six bookcases from my swivel chair there is no shelf without a vase, basket, or bowl in front of the books. Peggy loved vessels. Where else to put pods and weedy things.

Vessels are hands and hands are vessels. What is better than being held in a circle of arms? To be sheltered from the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to.  I held her against abandonment as in orphaned, never to know a father and barely a mother. I promised her I could be her father and her mother, her brother and her lover.

Better yet we found a gourd to scoop out and make of it lantern to light the way, lit by a radiance made together.

Over time my embrace became invisible. We had created a third vividly unseen entity, a shawl.  It could have been a clarinet concerto or a poem with encompassing lines she might crawl into surrounded in transport to her own sanctuary.   

Held aloft in this charged and rarefied air, together we pilgrimed to a safe unknown. Arms, not for shielding but for cherishing. Vessels running over.

The coral tree outside our window is still in its winter. Peggy resides in its root-stream. Three branches are shaping a vase in their bare arms as if red buds have gathered only she can see.