Inside the head uv a fish writer
She delivers packages, letters, messages, taking the short-cut route through the fields. The sun and wind are freeing, invigorating. She could close her eyes and walk briskly, arms out, reliving a once-upon-a-tme when she was a hefty-winged raven, finding each breath and matching step elevating and exhilarating. Her 2nd stop is always Pola’s farm and zoo, where she bathes and feeds the baby elephant, filling and leaving a basket of fruit for the chattering monkey twins, and lastly, sits to the side of the elderly gentleman panther singing the lullaby her mama sang, while he sips from a bowl of cream.
The earnings are enough to keep the garden seeded and not only feed the gypsy miners, but herself, aunt Reubie in the old stone cottage, and the children Norin and Wita. With barter for nails from the garden vegetables, the gypsy wood-carver made a temple of candles out of broken barnboards, kindling and wood-chop, and she could greet travelers and passersby who stopped to see. The candles when lit together, made a star that could be seen from as far away as can be imagined.
By the way, what was her name?
She was a robust woman of 42 in the days when knights, blinkingly armored, trotted up on horses so strident they were drawn to the likeness of willow and birch in snow. Days of reverence, pride, fear, and pony uprisings.
The simple folk longed to live peacefully in their patched cabins, gentle farmer homes, climbing ivy rancheros, grassland huts, coconut houseboats playing at the river edge.
She does her best every day to fulfill appointed duties. 13 dusty blue miners last counted eat suppers in decency, she sees to it, an humble feast is ready when they come around 7 pm to gather at the kitchen window, waiting as complete with roasted chicken and fried potato, bread and cream and brandied apples, the "Table Ready!" call would ring out - and they’d dance gaily clamoring for chairs, laughing and singing “La,lalalala Lee…Veritas Veritas…La lalala Lay…..”
