Is this where the love goes?

First we were hot, and then warm; now we are cool!’ my special lady would say sometimes as she laid in her bed contented muddled, me quite forgotten now; but clearly she was still feeling loved. She knew that I was her best friend.

Here she is the poet, of sorts, having a moment remembering for some reason the old fashioned hot water system she knew as a young woman when she and her sisters had moved house with its exploding gas geezer and its intermittent sizzling crazy hot water in the flashy new bathroom where there was always a constant queue for a bath, apparently. In her own unique style she then goes on to remember their first electric heated water system which replaced the old geyser and then finally she takes you to a lagoon…. I know not where (and I don’t quite know if I am quite right about who she is actually with)

Her and dad’s favorite tune was ‘The Blue Danube’. She liked to waltz around the room with us kids while he played lousy honky tonk on the old piano! I now realize she would have rather been dancing with him. Oh how she loved to dance. There were more tunes she loved but I reckon I can hear that Old Blue Danube playing here.

Huffy Blue Blossom, as only my dad would call her, could always talk for hours about everything, often in one sentence it seemed to us and she expected us to know what she meant, which we did. Three conversations at once she could keep up, even if we couldn’t!

Things got especially muddled during her final six weeks. Or did things seem clearer? I will never know but this piece I dedicate to her with my boundless love. These are more or less the actual lines she said about things; some new to me just then. She seemed to roller coast and wrap up her whole life into this one moment in a few pretty lucid lines. It threw me! It is during the last six weeks of her life. Please laugh with her. She knew she was being funny! It is quite simply her last dance…….

The lady talks
Now in snapshots muddled smiling sweet
This one time crystal clear
Talking
Specifically I think
About the different
Kind of baths she took
In half remembered drifts
Then came of course the Silk in shades of pink…….

‘Oh yes my dear

Bathing was always a hit and miss affair
In those days
I remember
It was always too blooming hot
Sometimes boiling
With one of those old fashioned gas geysers

Oh yes my dear

We bathed in far too hot water
We singed our lips
On summer nights

On winter nights
We danced in steam
Lit our own stars
We couldn’t even see the moon
Through that steam
And I could feel his pulse across the room

Oh yes my dear

Then we turned electric…..

We found ourselves in warm
More even water
We knew just where to place our feet
Just where it would scorch
Knew just when to stop
And how to breath
And so the summer nights
Turned velvet smooth
We danced
We drank honey with the moon
And I could feel his heart beat through my skin

And now my dear

Now we find ourselves in water cool
Never to dance the way we did
But I only have to shut my eyes because
Those dancing steps
Run deep inside my head
And in this gentle place I find me in
I don’t feel his heartbeat anymore against my skin……….

Because his heart is simply part of me
He is the moon the stars to me
In days now turned to cotton cloud from crimson silk
Smooth gentle cotton cloud my dear
And much more than anything
I dared to dream back then
We are still together in the crystal clear
Still swimming in the gentle
Shimmering shallow blue
And my dear it’s very clear to me
That me and that Old Geyser
Still together all these years
Will forever be travelling on our way to here…..

Yes that’s what she said!
Gill McGrath© …mostly  Huffy Blue Blossom©