The young woman and the sea

by Maria Claudia Faverio

She was not like the other women.
She loathed idle chatting,
the fetters of family,
rootless as a dismembered star
or a naughty thought
kicked out of the mind.

After years and years
of wandering,
she had put her seven league boots
on the shoe shelf
and had settled down by the sea.

She had slowly forgotten
the anguish of windscreens
and winding stairs
and let uncaged time
run freely in her hut.

They had eased into a new identity
crowded with details
exiled by the retinas of the masses -
chance encounters of cloud and sunlight,
white processions of gulls
remindful of priests
in sultry countries,
and other funny features
that gaze through creation.

They stripped bearded clichés
of their dullness
and enjoyed the eloquence of the unsaid
and the bidding touch of the invisible,
counterpointing nature with an inner melody
only freaks and angels could hear.

Until one day time said:
"We have to go now.
Let's go to the land
of the uninterrupted sun."

She put snatches of verse
and scattered colours
in her backpack
and followed time,
peacefully strolling
into the ocean
without looking back.

There was a sudden stroke
of heavy wings,
then silence,
and a giggling
in the distance,
far, far away.