Vivien Eime
Two Seasons

cacklehoned

spring. in the sun. lying on grass with my twin skin next to me. close next to me. watching wispy clouds relating stories in 3-d. mermaids meet dragons clasp hands to dissipate into a wishing well with 2 jills and no jack. modern times. modern stories.

is it true that butterflies evolve from caterpillars and live for a week? crawl through winter to fly into spring. only for a week? or was it only for a day. do i remember a day or a week. would they?

i feel the grass on my back, imagine myself long only eating eating eating eating until a silent call urges me to coil my long self into a ball. coocooned and waiting. imagine.

rolling over now to begin the coil and come face to face with my twin skin. out of my imagination – out of my coocoon – face to face. me and my twin skin touching front to front. eyes an inch from eyes noses receding from the pressure breast to breast hips hipped knees and feet balancing. i wonder why i don't fall in. melted by the sun. to just meld. we could name ourself cainannabelle or joan whale. i realise we wouldn't survive on one income. a tragedy. devastation on such a beautiful day.

earthed from dreams i stretch and feel my stomach growl. think about dinner. remember the grass and begin to graze.

black hued lacklore

suddenly winter. i rise above a leunig landscape and it is night. such a sense of light as i glide toward the stars (or the few that he will allow) a venused grouplinged heaven where orion, upturned, only ever stands fist raised.

from where did i acquire wings? and how long may i have them?? i am not dead for they are brown and i am glad, absurdly, to have vision bifocal... suddenly feel for the ibis.

thoughts of all those things that i have left as my home whisper and flood my mind as i glide. i have left them, left them all. i spy you and wonder where your home is; hover, continuing to spy your lone figure foot watching toward a raised flat stone. still now, father sown and mother tended, allowing one tear to well and fall you talk as if those you visit are still where you placed them feet together eyes closed.

to whom do you speak? and your head turns – as does mine – to find the owl. but it is i who hooted. i who spoke... a feather flicks in my mouth. i am the owl... madam as seen in the master's world. i have stepped over the welcome mat, cut my legs from the earth to find i appear only ever as another's vision.

too easily this sadness may bind me – for i know what it is to live for the other – look up so i might breathe space and catch the larger vision... at last sense my advance. each toe has an end you see.

with a tremor i prepare to travel with wings – in flight! fassung, twit-twoo.

© Vivien Eime and Gerald Ganglbauer 1996 Disclaimer