Another world is mine that none else see
© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved
Another world is mine that none else see,
Cast from a softer, stranger, sweeter mold,
Created by some laughing god for me and me
Alone -- its colors bright, its textures bold
Impressionistic sweeps. I look at trees
Like Renoirs, vivid splashes tossed against
The towering, thundering watercolor seas
Of sky. New-washed, chalk-drawn -- my world
-- unfenced,
Unlined, unsigned, it bears no scars of men.
Its velvet folk, androgynous, unflawed,
Move with a boneless grace from home to glen.
I stand and watch in joyous wonder, awed.
I need no spacebound ship, no mystic
passes
To reach my world. I just take off my
glasses.
from Minerva Wakes, Copyright 1994
I clearly remember the day I wrote this sonnet. It
was a North Carolina summer day with a thunderstorm building but
not yet arrived. The trees had that particularly vivid green they
only have when their backdrop is the black underbellies of clouds,
the flowers in my yard glowed like jewels, and I ran outside without
my glasses on to check the mail before the rain started. I happened
to look down the street to my neighbor's house as I was pulling
the mail out of the box, and realized that not only could I not
see the powerlines that ran down the street (though I could still
see the poles), but I also couldn't see that particular neighbor
very well. I had no idea whether the person getting into the car
was even male or female, but the movements he or she made looked,
to my new-minted vision, sleek and elegant. The world had no trash
to my new eyes, the houses looked soft and perfectly painted and
new.
I ran inside and wrote the poem in about a half an hour, and a
couple of years later, when I wrote the book Minerva Wakes,
I decided Minerva Kiakra, the protagonist, would wear glasses --
and stuck the poem in the book.
Kate >>
|
