Frieda Christofides, Spring in the Conservatory (Artist Website, Instagram)
Watercolor on 100% cotton paper
The sheets are drying in the last light, tented on folding racks
like a miniature encampment.
Stretched tight like a high wire—light
skims in low from the left. I can pick out the gold round now.
Momentary, skittering, wind whistles and is gone.
Flips the sheet hem.
Seven pm and the light’s still above
the grass, stubbling the low clover, as though
we’ve dammed time, swelling it into a mill pond.
Although an eye blink’s still an eye blink, a minute still a minute.
I pull bath towels from the stone wall, crisped from drying.
There’s a little rasping sound as I tug them—
the towels’ looped threads catch
on the stones’ surface, blooming with lichen.
Seven thirty, pendant and close, the lone globe waits.
Shadows stroke their long fingers
over the tips of the grass,
hesitate with the last bird song.
As I gather laundry, my friend arrives,
and we go walking.
A small pleasure for us both—
as she has young children, and I am often away.
And the late light—which feels like an illusion,
like a weightless
gasp as the car crests the hill.
Like a trembling,
like a bead of water trembling
on the lip of a rain spout—
dims and slips further away. Each retreating
breath imperceptible at first,
and then another,
and then another