By Rachel Alpert
A Tuesday evening in Edgartown
Six chimes elude from the Old Whaling Church bells
sonorously ringing in the evening overture.
A guitarist crescendos on the Harbor View packed porch,
each delicato pick and strum vibrates my inner strings.
I sit, composed in sweet harmony,
my attuned soul leaps and pirouettes to sole tapping
Ode to Joy!
Framing the singer, the harbor view portraiture
splashes its palette of color inside and outside my lines,
the lurid cerulean plein air vibrancy
shames the oils motifed in Water Street galleries.
Painted masts and blank canvas brush patina-like
past the white-washed sun-bleached one-eyed light
I am impasto into Matisse’s Joy of Life.
At seven sisterly sounds, I waltz down Water Street
with the windowed white widow-peaked ladies,
mothers to festive flags and fecund flowers.
A girl, small hand in large bonding small heart to big,
tugs her mother, heart strings and all, to a garden ledge
for Olympian balance beaming.
We (Mom and I) connect the knowingest of almost imperceptible nods,
maternally sharing cherished moment and fleeting years
I sit to savor a Sicilian Slice of Edgartown;
a sprout of a man (“man” unripe to me four decades his senior
“sprout” sour to his palate no doubt)
folds in for a taste of my sweet wrought iron table
and assuredly out of gastronomic politeness not a lonesome hunger
spicily inquires of my evening intent;
delicious flattery consumed if not fed!
At the harbor, the tide flows high, full and deep,
a family sails onto the dock
for a voyage into posterity.
I offer to reel in their moment;
the Mom, anchor as always, unfurls
a smile that laps gently at my shore,
her soft thank you immerses me in a sea of gratitude
Eight bells elevate my exotic evening
into the parting celestial spectacle,
shreds of pink ribbons delicately afloat in a purpling aerial sea.
My soul, now light as the nightingale
in flight skyward untethered,
I soar, sweep into the heavens,
on wings angeled with the fullness of
a Tuesday evening
Rachel Alpert is a retired lawyer and lives in Edgartown, where she enjoys writing poetry, gardening, and kayaking.
