Repose

Shrouded grey clouds permit the workings of a rainy day.
Long legs bent behind me as I lay limply upon the couch, soaking in the late summer romance of a novel set in the mountains of Iowa.

A travel photographer pulls into a long dirt driveway to ask the farmer's wife for directions.

His keen eye and slender body find a forgotten woman.

Pages turn themselves. The mind dressed in a long floral skirt runs through pastures of high grass.

I rub the top of my feet together and rest my chin into the other palm.

A green pick-up truck follows the spine of rural byways to covered bridges and reddish sunrise streams. Painted scenes are captured by wide lenses.

My head becomes heavy and I find myself reading sentences twice. I fold the book and rest my cheek upon the sleeve of crossed arms.

I can hear the neighbors and their washing boards, the sea beaten and swirled in the rocky coves below the windows. The walls are open windows.

Thick, sweet air washes into the room and over me.

The heaviness of late morning lifts though the book stays closed and limp.

The subtle beauty of bare footsteps lead me across the tiled floor toward the misty open windows.

I lean upon the sill scanning the grace and aching romance of the ocean.

I sigh the sigh of gratitude and fall softly back into the doorway of the barn on RR 2 in old Madison County, Iowa.