Kinship

Where have all the romantics gone?

Is there a place for us,

A place where our faltering words,

Our soulful, boundless, grey words

Fall like rain upon white sheets

Of murdered trees?

I search the manuscripts

The magazines, the blogs,

The websites…

Is there no more room

For the flowers of Pemberley

Does Jane Eyre

Lay silent in her grave

Do tears still stain the cheeks

Of the youngling over the

Torn wing of the butterfly?

My heart aches,

I search the meanderings

Of the foolhardy

Of the complacent

Of the modern, progressive

Come out come out

Wherever you are

The followers

Of silent forest pathways

Or rain-felled garden stone walkways.

Are there any who still

Hold their breast

at the ocean waves,

Still catch their breath with every crest fall?

Is there a place for our words?

If so, please tell me.

For I long to fill the pages

Of a handmaid leather bound journal

To find Ms. Potter laying about the ground

Conversing with the brown rabbit.

To run headlong into another girl

Such as I

A pencil in her hand, her hair

A notebook tucked away in a pocket

Her lips pursed with thoughts

Needing to be expressed

Needing to be read

Pondered over.

Are there any more like us

These grey-pink girls

With hearts all a flutter

over the white herring

Which flies overhead.

Whose eyes water

over the trailing wind

among the willows

The storming wind

Searing through

the long yellowed grasses

Of the moors, the dunes.

I wonder...

Where are you

My fellow lovelies

Do you hide in the libraries

Surrounded by the words

Of our elders

Or within the classrooms

Of our colleges

Learning new things

Forgetting the old?

Come out come out

Wherever you are

We need you

We need your prudence,

Your thoughtfulness,

Your musings and ponderings

Your romantic grey-pink words

Which fall from your lips, your pen

Like delicate rose petals in death.

Come, let us chat over tea

Delight in the simplest of things

Talk not of politics, of wars, of hate.

Let us instead muse over

the ants carrying heavy loads

Over the flight of the dragonfly

The lit-up grasses under a full moon.

Let us look to the magnificence of the moon

And dream and yearn

For quieter days

For laughter

For kinship

Come away with me

Come, let us play

As school girls

At hopscotch

At tag

Let us lay upon quilts

Upon the lawn

Let us read from our favorite passages

Let us giggle over

Boyish behaviours

Make fun of the arrogance of men

Let us be feminine

Feisty and at times full of rage,

Of passion.

Let us grow old

in grace

In wisdom

In love.

In kinship.