34/35/36: Winter Tan

Posted by sarahsmiles on February 20th, 2007 filed in Uncategorized

I

Voices spill out from the cafe, while I warm my soul in the winter sun,
wrapped up against the sharp mistral, craving the windy silence,
to the warm noisy within. The social mantle is off my shoulders today
and I endure the glances reserved for the recluse as patrons enter.
It is time to head home, south, to shed my hat, scarf and gloves
and resurface as myself, among familiar friends and villages.

To watch the tourists on the beaches, as naked as August,
as if by force of desire the sun will do more than melt snow on the hills.

There is something revenant about the winter tan,
charlotte rampling pale skin on northern flesh
recently liberated from a necrotic freeze; almost
translucent blue, almost still frozen in appearance.
Awkward movements, stick-like ambling unsure
whether life still heats within–still quick and green
under the epidermis of dry dead skin.
Returning from the grave north to the mercurial south,
in relative terms, in the hope of recitation.

II

No sign of the fluid casual step, the self-assured saunter,
of bright skirts under peasant blouses, crisp white skirts
over pressed pants and deck shoes of the cognizant.
They live, in warm summer nights, reclining lizardly pool-side,
on private beaches, or boat decks in languid shoals and colonies
under dangerously blue skies. Unlike these refugees of the winter tan,
huddling like lost souls at Lethe, magic-carpet beach towels sparsely set,
alone on the shores of the sea that only a dawn were dusted with fine snow.
The bravely desperate make tentative ablutions to the saline goddess–
walrus flounderings in the cold surf–as if to prove, in the hopes that
something miraculous will revive the sleepy seaside of their souls.

III

I watch all this from the mind’s eye of my displaced vantage,
Villeneuve d’Avignon. Yesterday it was Vaison la Romaine.
Tomorrow perhaps Arles, as I slowly wend my way back home,
retracing the steps of the conquerors. Home to feed
with satiating wonder, on the slow warming blood
of the displaced on the hard stony beaches of Nice:
death in Villefranche, as I watch for someone
who has not come to pretend to live
but to bask in the last sunny days, and die.
Somewhere on a hazy cape or under a keel
in a deserted marina when we meet.

Yes, it is time to go home. Time to die.
Time to live again, on the past
and the ashen half-blush nape
of someone never going home.


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