Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Travel Story For Girls

I fell in love with you
in 1913,
even though
I was not yet born. (I never let trifles stop me.)

You fell in love with me
in 2016,
even though
the limits of time and death had to be bent. 

Look at all the alcohol, all the wrinkles, all the mistakes we made,
you and I, 
in different places but in the same awful ways
(only to emerge, together, shining).

Never fret, my pet.
Life's a messy business, but we
are Mistresses of the whole shebang and are not limited by the usual stuff.

Still, I am just a little thing,
a comma,
but I have curled up in the curve of your ear
this early morning,
and am whispering how beautiful you still are, how beautiful we are,
how beautiful
and sweet like a row of mock orange straight on down the line.


________

The top image is of Evelyn Nesbit in 1913. The bottom image is of a mock orange bush. Evelyn Nesbit was perhaps the first supermodel, being the most sought after model for print and billboard advertisements in the early 20th century, and she was the inspiration for the classic "Gibson Girl."  Discovered at a young age, she became the bread winner for her family and survived being courted and then drugged and raped by the famous architect Stanford White. In later life, she drank to excess as her success declined, and her life was not a very happy one, I don't think. One of my favorite stories about her was about how, when a visiting admirer kicked a dog in her presence, she gave him nine kinds of hell for it and defended the dog--she was an animal lover all her life. As for the mock orange, I find it a sweetly old fashioned kind of bush, and its blossoms are both pretty and wonderfully fragrant.

8 comments:

  1. In your travel stories for girls. love always seems able to bend the limits--of time, of space, of everything else. Beautiful, wistful, and somehow serene poem(to me anyway) which lets us think of and even dwell in all the graceful old things that linger in the shadows of our efficient but o so sterile modernity. I do believe that love can always see them.

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  2. it is beautiful, twisting through time and pain to come together.

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  3. I freakin' love this poem. Badass perfection, from the first to the last.

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  4. This is my favorite:

    "Still, I am just a little thing, a comma, but I have curled up in the curve of your ear"

    So flipping gorgeous.

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  5. I've never seen a mock orange before, I don't think. Life IS a messy business. Love this.

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  6. Beautiful and sweet like the mock orange. I love the poem, and also really enjoyed hearing Evelyn's story. Love the idea of curling up in the corner of her ear, whispering how beautiful she is, something any woman would appreciate.

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  7. Everything about this poem is truly beautiful and very touching.

    Pat
    Critter Alley

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Spirit, what do you wish to tell us?