There Is More I Want To Say
It rained, but what else is new.
On the bus there was a man who smiled a certain way. In profile he looked like a Norman lord: monkish blond hair and a dusky beard; a slim, straight nose, as on a tomb effigy. He wore khakis and leather shoes, but this didn’t matter. For ten minutes he had another history: he had seen a few battles but preferred books; a second son maybe, destined for the Church but handed a sword and a title upon the death of an elder brother. It didn’t help that next to him was a man with a hood pulled up around his face, who wore a similarly medieval expression--ascetic yes, but lit by some harsh beautiful idea. An unwilling vassal, let’s say, called off the land to fight for his liege. Our lord has read books, as we know, and perhaps he has cultivated shocking ideas about equality--he is traveling with his men, spattered by the same grit and rain, something his older brother would never have done. This is why he smiles.
There was a sun-break (this is what we have instead of ‘sun’ here) in the late afternoon. Over the hill there were swallows--the kind with blue-grey backs and orange bellies--darting along the street, up and down. Catching insects while the light was good. They are so polite about avoiding you, coming to within six inches of your shoulder and veering away, singing the whole time. It made me want to thank someone who was kind to me when I was being particularly unbearable--someone I’d already thanked, and for whom more thanks would stray into impropriety. It’s an awful burden for someone who turns things inside-out for a living to have to be proper. So instead I stood on the hill gilded terrace by terrace in half an hour of light, near a corner garden, and wondered how there could be swallows and damask-roses at a time like this. That is a kind of thanks.
Beautifully written, dear Sister Willow