ELIZA:
THE COUNSELLOR by Bronwyn Allen Owen
My friend has many tricks
Don’t get me wrong
Good tricks, the best.
To listen deeply to
the subtext
for grief
pain, being
in the zone
for creative souls
she loves best to counsel.
Her place of bliss is
hanging upside down
under the surface of the Indian Ocean
looking up.
Her blue eyes like a wave of intensity so blue
so bright
I had trouble looking at them
at first sight, when
she swept me off my feet
with her insight.
In the deluge my soul
previously jettisoned,
surfaced
and floated — enlivened.
My friend taught me to play
with my writing
with a girly, tart party
coffee, custard, cake way of
making a manuscript make sense.
Reading
laughing
love; generous love
right there.
A spirit once came to my friend’s shoulder
A ghostly curtain in the breeze
Drifting in the grifting
twilight of wakening sleep
fluttered
fluttering
fear — not turned,
sharpened —
the sharpest mind
erudite and eros
embodied.
Insight
like a cello concerto
to open hearts and minds
to solid factual fantasy
stories that keep us
bound tight
in tricky neurotic locks
like flapping vacuous flags,
mental as anything
boots and all. Tough.
While she
tender, fast, funny and
fearless
swims us
to the deep end of our being
into the downstream current
to reclaim
if we reach for it
our own flotsom of bliss.
