For Paige, forever ago

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Winter is the cruellest season:

He said I love you I'll be better.

She waited.

He said I can't be better goodbye.

She buries him in the ground and cries over his grave.

II. A GAME OF CHICKEN, A GAME OF CHESS

Exuberance

Blonde hair brilliance

Queen across the board

Knight charges,

Frustrated, her plans are frustrated.

Queen across the board

Check, check, check:

She is not afraid, she will not back down,

Waits

With the patience and grace kin to her royalty.

III. THE FLYING SERMON

Kites swoop swoop--redorangeyellowgreen

And the blue blue sky.

Like water down the window

Diving for the ground,

Swift sweep back up

Up and down up and down

Teetertotter of the sky.

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Penelope's plans get drowned in the humdrum of everyday people

With everyday weights on their everyday shoulders.

Death seems inches away.

Heartbreak wraps its cold arms around

With the fear of dying like all those everyday people.

Oh all the king's horses and all the king's men!

Her fears sometimes block the air from filling her lungs with the dreams

She should not be afraid to dream.

Big dreams.

But in the now of everyday, she cannot see them.

The magnitude of soul:

Hers bursting out and filling the world with laughter

With gold

With everything she touches.

V. WHAT THE RIVER KNOWS

Walking upstream in a river, she looks to the people who are running on the shore.

Why can they move so swiftly?

Why can't she?

She doesn't realize:

One of these days, she will be the one on the shore, now with legs the strength of Samson,

With a heart made and fashioned for wading through hard things,

With a home all her own,

Adoring children,

Adoring husband.

And she will run with twice the speed of any who have been on land the whole race

For she has known the depths of the river.

She has known the swift current's downward pull,

And she has shown stronger than all of it.

Her beauty shall not be slackened, nor her strength overlooked.

One lady.
She moves worlds with soft words

With the magic of a listening heart

And the energy of a thousand summer mornings.

Patience. Promise. Hope.

Dhairya. Vacana. Asha.

Shvasiti shvasiti shvasiti