Counterpoint
I.
She would turn from me, move noiselessly across the room, close the door.
The silence.
The silence between us …
What simile to serve, ocean, chasm, what name to bestow, thing to call, severance, rift, void, hollow … before the wall might have … might have been scaled … I would have leapt, scrambled, fallen … headlong …
This land we carve out ourselves.
The sign says, ‘This Way’ ‘This Way …’ We walk on. Bold, resolute, down the straight road with no seeming end.
At one time her resting hand would reach for yours,
And we would, and she …
Lives fall into motion,
The Thinking, the Being, the Motion, the Silence …
Synchronicity … the sway.
The sway …
That’s how it starts, tide in tide out,
Tide in, tide out, tide in tide out.
The silence stretches …
Shadow shrinks at noon.
Slack water before the dark creeps in when all is still …
Inert, is still …
We are caught,
Caught in -
The gulf between rock and shore.
An island, the sea that surrounds,
One star, the next.
II.
Beyond the pane of glass, you read the vibrations of the world, faces, frowns, stares, blank, white-grey busy lives, empty lost lives, pounding heels, concrete, bodies pushing through, molecules, trajectories, invisible journeys shooting this way, that … You read anger, disappointment, regret. Some of it you make your own, the rest you discard … a fleeting thought … A memory pricks you, knifepoint between the ribs, you lift your eyes … your …
My gaze holds yours … don't want to let it fall …
A disturbance in the stomach, in the soul.
You pull your eyes away …
It’s everything about you...
The sway,
The pull …
Quinn.
This woman I would see in passing …
This stranger I think I could love …
This person I’ve always known.
III.
Quinn didn’t like it when people parroted outrage or expended too much emotional energy on news that wasn’t news, when so and so used the wrong word or wore a provocative shirt, she wanted to credit each person with a basic sense of decency. Life mattered, people matter … not wrong-thinking, thoughts could be fleeting, thoughts could grow and change and expand, we learn we grow, we evolve, expand our minds, receive new information, new data. Thoughts were abstract. Thoughts could be tricky, requiring mental gymnastics to make them, make sense …
Sometimes that was useful,
Sometimes that might be very clever, very interesting …
Sometimes though …
Sometimes all that thinking,
All those thoughts weren’t useful.
When you were hungry or down to your last tenner or because your mother had just died. You left school feeling worthless, feeling stupid.
It's not easy …
Nothing is so easy,
This World,
… Universe,
Complicated, complex, conclusions not always neat or tidy.
Quinn relished a difficult opinion, nuance, context mattered … She hated when people didn’t get angry …
Didn't get angry when they should …
People.
Power …
Negligence made her angry,
Irresponsibility.
-The irresponsibility of it …
Winging it …
Selfishness, greedy …
Trophy Hunters - of all kinds
When animals, animals, humans …
-Are mistreated, harmed, abandoned, left to starve …
A world of mistreatment, what we do to others, to ourselves …
Birds … - the Homeless alike, are kept away by spikes.
When people didn’t take their rubbish home …
Deniers of Science, deniers of Sense, of Change.
The planet spins and burns …
She hated herself at the thought of causing harm, still, she had erred …
She hated when others were quick to blame, quick to disown, quick to assert the rightness of things.
This was Quinn, she loved as much as she hated.
Farmhouse Bread, the Yellow Bear …
Moss on tree trunks, her books, her notebooks, the Dictionary, old illuminated bibles, – even though she wasn’t religious … painted edges, the binding sometimes soft, at other times as fragile and brittle as flaking skin, requiring new growth.
Lovable monsters …
The Unsung Heroes, The Underdog.
Sad endings …
- Shakespearean Tragedy …
Other people’s humour – she thinks she’s not funny, or that she’s funny, as in goofy, or funny always by accident, by way of some inadvertent misadventure like tripping on the corner of the rug or describing something wrongly, not understanding something the way she feels she should, she gets annoyed at her own ignorance, she would always apologise for it, she was always afraid she was really rather silly.
Expressions that no one hears anymore …
Mythology Allegory Fable Anecdote.
Someone else’s life story always seemed, more adventurous, more meaningful, than her own …
Silverback Gorillas, Elephants, Japan,
Germany, Mexico, Norway, Iceland.
Fields and grasses. Dragonflies, Nectar …
Skeleton bones
Old Mole Homes
Great Wingspans,
Frangipan
Thick Woollen Socks, Silk Camisoles,
Cream, printed, flock, floral …
Belted, Belled, or Blouson sleeve.
She admires, kindness, and sweetness in the young, vigour and humour in old age.
She dreams about the grandparents she never knew, tracing the lines of the moustache, the suit in the photograph, the ladies straw bowler hat the slightly creased linen trousers high waisted, wide-legged.
She keeps the vintage cocktail ring in her desk drawer, cubic, aquamarine, she’s too afraid to wear it, though she knows it would be the most fitting tribute of all.
Knowledge.
Understanding, Ideas, Facts, Creativity.
Certainty, Stability … Peace …Calm.
Cogs and Paper, Rockets, Letters,
Parcels received in the mail.
Christmas Crackers Party Poppers …
Kinetic sculptures, Jigsaws, Paper Models, Crocheted Blankets,
Baggy Jumpers,
Passion Projects,
Temples with Vines,
The Yew and the Oak, Ferns, Wisteria, and Ivy and Hope.
Eccentricity.
Compassion, Courage, Sarcasm, Gentleness, Humility, Empathy, Imagination …
Reason …
Through all that, Fear, Recrimination …
A feeling, a knot deep down in the pit of …
Engravings, historical, drawn in fine black lines, Silver, Abalone Shell.
Dainty Pearls.
Feathers …
Wood. Driftwood, Glass, Metal, Stone …
Bach, Mozart, Peacock feathers, Violins, that piano …
The sustain pedal, a minor key … warped windows, old glass …
Abandoned things, that relative she didn’t know who sings … Oil paintings, her Locket, her father’s handkerchief he’d always carry to clean her mouth her hands after she’d eaten Ice Cream … clean her glasses … dry her tears … the ugly Vase …
That ugly vase …
Stone walls, creaking gates.
Old Houses, old … Photos, Jeans …
Ornate Wigs dusted with white clay powder, Ravens, Corsets …
Bone - China Leaf Tea …
Walruses …
Seriousness, Conviction.
Noodles slurped from a mug.
Mist …
In the morning …
Claggy fog
Masking shapes of the summit …
Sightless
Hidden, the future, the present, hidden from view.
A Mist Crow,
The Ghost Crow with milk-flowing cloak and mysterious black hood,
He bows his head, gracious spirit,
Bears witness to, in the presence of, the many invisible souls long dead.
Lost dead souls …
The hush, the whisper, the tink tink of harbour, deep blow of horn issued from boat that came from the nothing…
Thoughts of folktales and times long past.
Salted Beef cold the next day
Thunder heard from beneath the duvet,
Fire … the Fireflies, fire fires in the hearth, fire in the heart, in the gut …
Melted Chocolate crumbling Cheese, soft sweet Apples - raw Cabbage, chopped up, left out of the pot. That Mother left for her …
Beautiful Dogs that loved with all their being, with their big hearts and beautiful big souls.
The immeasurable, unfathomable …
This was Quinn.
These were some of the things she loved or the things I imagined she did, or just wanted her to, or discovered about her … perhaps they were just all the things I never knew about her at all …
Rather she was this woman I would see in passing …
At the Coffee Shop or the local Twenty-Four Store, picking out Carrots, or Onions …
Potatoes perhaps …
When everyone else was asleep …
All the fresh produce looking past its best, not fresh at all, everything the opposite …
Perhaps it was her …
… I only imagined …
-I saw - sitting by the Modern Statue, while I jogged through the Park.
That thing, a curiosity … Everyone saw something different.
A knot that had no end …
Some link in a chain or something …
Perhaps, perhaps I had it all wrong.
Perhaps, it was some piece of an old dismantled ship … great big folds of metal … I wondered if it had been a special boat, something to memorialise -
…this thought, a loss, indescribable sadness …
Transcience …
Some would say it was just a hunk of metal and … - Quinn well …
This woman I would see in passing and wonder …
This woman I had never met.
This woman I might have loved.
This stranger …
This person I had always known and loved with my whole being and she …
Everything about her …
And she …
A stranger …
IV.
She closed the door,
Nothing but still, silence …
Nothing
Between us
But still
Silence …
Before we …
We sat at the table together in the kitchen,
Food, untouched.
‘I don’t … I don’t know you …’
Her words, not mine …
‘What?’
‘I mean … I don’t … I don’t want to know you anymore …’
These feelings I had fed, had nurtured …
I had walked through my life…
An entire other life, this other person had walked towards me from the other direction had looked me in the eyes and passed me by …
Her back to me …
Always just out of reach …
Just missing … by an arm’s reach …
Missing …
Destined to miss one another …
I would see her in the …
Everything stretched.
The heart, pumping …
A disturbance.
A disturbance in the in the …
Then vanish, gone …
Gone …
She moves noiselessly across the room … closed the door.
The silence …
The …
V.
A woman …
A stranger …
Jogging through the park, she was standing by that crazy-looking statue,
-The one you just didn’t know where it began or ended …
Can’t say I’d ever really noticed it till I’d seen her … her face, a sadness there, a reflection of my own.
No one and nothing to reach it.
Then later, later on … I’d stopped for Coffee …
I was looking out of the window …
People hurrying past one another,
Missing each other.
Getting drenched by the rain -
Miserable …
Passing each other by and …
‘Excuse me?’ she said …
I turned.
‘Might I sit here?’
‘Please … ’ I said. ‘Please.’
By Robyn Hunt (c) 2020
Blog Image: Gavin Roberts
***
In loving memory of Lee Wells September 8th, 1978 - September 18th, 2019.
- Lee, you would have been the first to read this story just to let me know you cared. You were the sweetest, purest, person and friend. I am forever heartbroken you are gone …
