Tuesday 23 October 2012

TURNING to GOLD (HIM and HER)


Warwick Park, afternoon (14:51), and our coffee is too hot to drink so we sit at the little cafeteria tables watching the wisps of steam spiral and flower in the air like ghostly vines. The sky, built of slate slabs, shatters with the sun and a robin's melancholy, piping, song of autumn. 

Two youngsters - maybe just approaching their teens - stand together on the grass among the fallen leaves. 

He in his low-slung gangsta jeans and oversize trainers. A little silver scooter lies folded at his feet. She with her hair in a severe 1930's bob and her coat buttoned up to her chin; she towers over him, lanky and slightly awkward; like a newly appointed governess.

He steps towards her and hugs her. Clasping his hands around her back and waist until she breaks away, collapsing out of his arms, giggling and hiding her mouth and nose in the cup of her hands – her cheeks as red and as excited as the promise of Christmas.  

She is still giggling when, with ferocious seriousness, he stands on tiptoes and plants a light brushing kiss upon her cheek. 

Two children trying on their parents’ wardrobe; finding new bodies that have yet to fit the spirits of fire that they now possess - like adults' clothes hanging from a child's shoulders. 

Innocent? Perhaps not. Fire will always burn and there is a Prometheus in us all; moth born, we are instinctively drawn to the fire of the gods. And what strange and consuming fires burn upon the altars of our adolescence. They carve with searing heat, the fearful caverns of our adult lives.    

For a little while they talk. He picks at the tyres of his scooter. She stands, stork-like, putting all her weight on one leg and fiddling with her buttons, the way that girls in school playgrounds have always done through the stream of time itself. 

They turn and walk away, down the avenue of trees into a world that is turning to gold.       

8 comments:

  1. oh, the wonder and excitement and sheer hopefulness, and maybe awkwardness, of those days in which the world (along with bodies and hearts and minds) is starting to open up and it's all there ahead, yours for the taking.

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    1. Yes, exciting, scary, awkward and wonderful.
      They were such an odd little couple - the huge height difference, one being so old fashioned looking and the other dressed like a Top Man mannequin. I love that; that even amidst the fires of adolescence an awareness that there is something precious and more attractive that resides below the surface veneers.

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  2. A moment superbly caught and now I have the urge for a hot coffee :o)

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    1. Haha Thank you Owl. Keep your eyes open while you wait for it to cool!!

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  3. I wasn't expceting that ending! :) Great story!!

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    1. Thank you - times when the changing seasons take a heightened symbolic effect.

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  4. I often do not have words..superb..you are such a brilliant writer!!..and reading your powerful words..I am captured inside this moment..you so easily unearth memory and emotions in me..that spark me to life..beautiful!Fantastic piece..
    Victoria

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    1. Aw that is really kind of you, but believe me, Victoria, you DO have words - and not only that you have such a gift with images too. Your Trees in a Hidden Forest is really stunning.

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