Rachel had strawberry-blonde hair that was fine and wavy. She was wearing a one-piece bright red bathing suit. The family had the beach to themselves, since it was in their own private backyard. Her mother and father watched her from a distance, smiling at her occasionally from their beach-chairs. They had been exchanging sections of the evening newspaper during all this, making a light but clear rustling noise that floated over the surface of the beach. It was a quiet day, with very little breeze, and the rustling of the newspapers could be heard over the expanse of the water by some of the canoers who floated by every few minutes. It had been hours since Rachel had acknowledged their existence. She'd been absorbed completely in her work, and her short, soft, chubby hands were covered with sand. She'd made many trails going up the side of the mountain using pebbles. It was quite a sight. Rachel had dimples, but they rarely showed because she nearly always had an intense frown of concentration on her face. She had many important projects, and she was always busy.
By the time dinner drew near, Rachel had made a mountain that was as tall as her waist, and filled the moat with water many times, though the water simply soaked into the ground every time. Her mother was cooking dinner inside, and the smell wafted out over the beach, making Rachel's little stomach grumble, but Rachel was determined to finish her mountain. She placed a final pebble near the blueberry peak, leaning on the mountain as she did so. The side she leaned on was very comfortable, since she had adorned it with several large pieces of moss earlier, to approximate pine-trees. The mountain had a variety of vegetation, actually, with many lichens, twigs, and the feathers of a dead bird decorating its sides.
Rachel's eyes, which were huge, with dark but short lashes, became very heavy as she placed the final pebble on her masterpiece. She fell asleep face-down against the moss, and her father looked up a moment later, chuckling when he saw her strawberry-blonde hair trailing over the mountainside. He looked back down at his paper, and it seemed indecipherable to him. He tried to concentrate on finishing the editorial he'd been reading, but it swam before his eyes.
He blinked several times, tossed the paper away, then walked over to Rachel and picked her up as gently as he could. The sand felt good under his feet as he carried her, and it made him feel like the earth was made for him. Her eyebrows were knit in an expression of worry and thought that looked somewhat comical on such a tiny face. Her father felt his eyes welling with tears, as he looked at his tiny daughter. She was so perfect, in every detail. He had no idea how she could have possibly come to exist, or how he could earn the privilege of getting to hold her. He brought her inside, very gently brushing some of the sand off of Rachel's bottom before placing her, with a dry towel draped over her, in his large easy chair, where she grunted in her sleep and then curled up like a kitten. The smell of her mother's cooking filled her while she was asleep, and as she lay curled on the armchair her eyebrows unknit themselves, slowly relaxing into an expression of peace.
Letter to the Author: Luke Buckham
at aworminmywall@hotmail.com
A Blue Feather
A blue feather landed on my shoulder
one day while I was waiting outside the doctor's office
to be called for my first self-made appointment.
Blue paint-stroke by a painter
who rarely moves in such places,
landing in a white room filled with dull things
to keep the bored busy with being bored,
and the worried busy with being worried.
About a foot long, it rested, see-sawing lightly,
on my collarbone, and I saw the window
near my shoulder was open, but no bird,
no person, nothing but the cloudless sky
that could've deposited it. I smiled so hard
my face ached, tears welcoming the gentle mystery
with a hollow bone filled my eyes,
and I took the feather from my shoulder,
afraid that it might disappear when I touched it.
But it held fast to reality, and I looked at my strange prize,
that I never asked for, and walked out into the parking lot
holding it, puzzled, more thoroughly delighted
than a child, because before I had the feather
I had a great knowledge of sadness. I had been worried
about a pain in my stomach, and a strange sore
on the back of my forearm. These things seemed now
to disintegrate in the breeze, and summer air
moved through my feather and through me
as if I had become a feather myself
upon receiving the present.
I looked over the shimmering cars,
vehicles of the diagnosed, that a mirage made
look as if they were lapping ocean waves,
and saw through the open window the doctor
walking around the waiting room alone on his feet
with a clipboard, frowning. He shrugged and went
back into his flickering realm with someone else.
Maybe he kept them safe from their own body
for a little while. But I did not follow him.
I stayed alone in myself, germs and immunities
all unnamed, feeling each cell
become more vulnerable than before,
yet more relaxed, too.
I still get that pain in my stomach sometimes,
and no other miracle has happened to me,
(even that day is a dubious miracle at best)
but I've been alive for forty years since that feather
and in all that time I haven't been to the doctor
even once. I don't disparage paid, trained healers,
and I don't advise anyone to do as I did, or to wait
for a blue feather to rescue them
from worrying of death;
This is just my story, the story of my vaguely powerful
and completely unexplainable life. You who suffer
immeasurably, who are hacked to death in wars made
by those who do not care for you, you who hate
without reason, you who tremble constantly
in fear of losing money, I pray that a blue feather
will come down someday to rest itself
on your shoulder, but I do not think
it will happen. It barely happened to me.
That sore on my arm has never faded, either.
It went numb and hardened into a shape
something like a Greek letter,
and I can't read Greek.
Protest
Rachel was digging a moat in the sand, around the mountain that she had just made. She frowned and looked at the mountain behind her mountain, the one with a bare peak that sat on the horizon across the lake in front of her, above a wall of pine trees. She'd been on the beach for hours, making her mountain. There were a lot of blueberry bushes on the sides near the water. Rachel had glared at the mountain in the distance for a long time, trying to figure out how to make her mountain look more like it. She had walked over to the bushes and gathered clumps of ripe blueberries by clenching them sternly and pulling, falling onto her bottom and dropping the berries all over her lap, because she was three years old and didn't always manage to keep herself upright, though in other respects she was very coordinated for her age. She hadn't cried, as many children do when they fall unexpectedly; she was too focused on her mission. She had gathered up the berries again and walked back to her mountain of sand, where she had carefully deposited them onto the peak, in an attempt to match the white-blue of the stones on the peak of the bigger mountain, because Rachel was a genius.
(Copyright 2004 - All Rights Reserved by Luke Buckham - Reprints Permitted
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