Follow the spectral scent, heavy and sweet, like Bee-orchids in an August heat. It leads down to the tingling streams of youth; fires the senses, trips the memory. I am with fireflies in France – a festival.
Blind tulip stalks, and the bent and brown-tipped spikes of a daffodilled spring, stand among my lilac clouds of thyme, the dancing pink of London Pride, the purple heads of sage and soon-to-be-blue of mature lavender. Older and wiser the garden ever grows, city-tall with irises, foxgloves and hollyhocks, outdoing each other until at last nasturtiums climb the hedge.
I saw a young man urinating against a wall in Lacaune and diverted my eyes to the blush of pelargonium and lobelia drooping from a sill. The air was scented with oregano, stocks and sweet pea. Rose-Marie and I lit a cigarette to share – Gitanes Maïs. I coughed. He turned; looked straight through my prissy reserve and laughed out loud; as if French pee was more potent than its English counterpart. Rose-Marie, four years my junior, for whom it was ‘normal, quoi’ walked away and left me to wilt under his scorn. She had dancing to do, groin on groin.
I begin to feel my age. My circle is now the circle of my garden. My eyes are clouded but my mind is clear. I no longer blush. Only age can envisage the winter garden while the sun is still high but past its zenith; can taste the bitter rhubarb of July and promise hydrangea and Michaelmas asters to the mind’s eye.
Where is he now, that monstrously alive youth? No longer young, for sure. He will, like me, have lost his bloom, have changed moment to moment, developed lines around those deep brown eyes. I wonder whether he ever asked himself, as I have; what is the risk that, if I pluck this rose, I will get stuck by a thorn? I wonder whether he forbore or bled.
Flowers once slow to form, pass swiftly now season on season. From bare branch laden with blossom, to fruit and nut and back to bare branch, seems but a breath. I know how the worm turns; how the Earth turns. Time flows as swift as pissing against a wall.
Oonah V Joslin lives in Northumberland, England. Winner of Micro Horror Prizes 2007 and 2008. Most read in EDF, Jan 2008. Guest judge in the Shine Journal 2008 Poetry Competition. Bewildering Stories Quarterly 4 2007 and 1 and 2 in 2008. She has had work published in Bewildering Stories, Twisted Tongue 8 & 9, Static Movement, 13 Human Souls, Back Hand Stories and The Pygmy Giant, Lit Bits, The Linnet’s Wings, The Ranfurly Review and Boston Literary Magazine. The list is growing every month which pleases her immensely! You can link to work, follow up-dates and contact Oonah at http://www.writewords.org.uk/oonah/ or http://www.oonahs.blogspot.com. She thanks everyone who takes the time to read and comment.
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26 Responses to “PICTURE OF INNOCENCE • by Oonah V Joslin”
Comments
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December 31st, 2008 at 1:03 am
Wonderful poetic – and certainly packs a punch. A good one to end the year by!
Axxx
December 31st, 2008 at 1:25 am
Yes, Oonah; the poet’s touch is quite apparent. Lovely work.
December 31st, 2008 at 1:56 am
Lovely and poetic.
–dj
December 31st, 2008 at 3:03 am
I remember this one, Oonah! Happy New Year!
December 31st, 2008 at 4:09 am
Overwritten. Sorry.
December 31st, 2008 at 4:12 am
Anne, Happy New Year!
Lovely of you to comment and so nice to hear from you X
Thank you all very much –
(there’s a mistake here by the way Gitanes Mais that should be with two dots above the i. The folks will see to it – in the meantime – ignore it if you will. )
December 31st, 2008 at 5:44 am
So much “purple prose” and excessive description that I had trouble figuring out what the story was about. In fact, I’m still not sure.
December 31st, 2008 at 7:08 am
I’m sorry to say I’m not sure I understood eithier.
December 31st, 2008 at 8:29 am
Surfing on a sea of imagery as waves from the past come rolling in works for me. Very enjoyable, Oonah.
December 31st, 2008 at 9:18 am
Oonah
Lovely stuff, as usual. You got me with the opening paragraph.
December 31st, 2008 at 9:40 am
Poetry is obviously a part of your soul, Oonah. Nicely done.
December 31st, 2008 at 10:19 am
Great imagery – you covered a lot of ground, not tomention Time, with this one.
Cheers
Mark
December 31st, 2008 at 11:19 am
Why should you be sorry, Tom? You didn’t over-write it. One person’s poetry is another’s purple – one person’s imaginative garden is another’s patch of weeds. Only I do look back sometimes and wonder how life has been for that young man I saw pissing against a wall in Lacaune… Don’t you ever wonder about things like that? And about how fast it has all gone?
Never mind, it’s New Year’s Eve!
Happy 2009, Everyone@everywhere
December 31st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Oona -
You write wonderfully well, BUT I think the poetic license in this piece has been overextended to the point of unwillingness to suspend disbelief. I am not suggesting that everyone responds as I do, but when I was a small girl in New York City, male urination was permitted off the curb, in the gutter and I saw many little boys urinate without my once feeling wonderment about any or an entwining with any through length of time. Also, the time needed to urinate is not nearly as long as the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. I may be wrong here, not being aware of the possible actuality of men taking pride in the potency of their pee or of their scorn for those reserved in observing it.
Roberta
December 31st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Oona-
You write wonderfully well, BUT I think that in this piece poetic license has been overextended to the point of the reader’s unwilling suspension of disbelief. I am aware that not everyone responds the way I do, but when I was a little girl in New York City, male urination in the gutter off the sidewalk was permitted in little boys. I saw many little boys urinate, and not once did I feel a personal wonderment about him or an entwining with him through time. Now I may be wrong about this, not having the masculine experience, but I never knew men take pride in the potency of their pee or feel scorn for those reserved in observing it. Also, smoking a cigarette takes longer than peeing.
Roberta
December 31st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
“male urination in the gutter off the sidewalk was permitted” Yuk! I was a small town girl and really innocent and there were many others like me.
And the character only lit the cigarette and coughed – never smoked it – just drew attention to her embarassment.
Some people don’t like this kind of writing – others do. But I don’t think there’s any ’suspension of disbelief’ involved here. We experience and interpret the world in different ways. EDF allows for that. Et vive la difference!
January 1st, 2009 at 8:30 am
Oonah, I read this piece, rated it, and moved on with my life. Then I came back and read it again. And again; and again. The damned thing really grows on you (no pun intended), and I repent of the lower-than-5 rating I gave it. Wonderful, evocative stuff!
January 1st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Bob, Thanks.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:19 am
That was a five from me, Oonah. A beautifully crafted piece. You have such a talent for painting with words. Short stories don’t have to have ridgid structure, so I disagree with the negative comments here. For me, it was like standing in front of a painting and allowing the ideas and images wash over me. Lovely start to my EDF New year reading. Nice to have your stories back at EDF as I know you’ve been busy with the Poetry. Happy new year.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:06 am
Oona-
In actuality I consider your writing a magnificence of descriptive delineation and coloring. I hope I will be reading more of your stories in which you can develop your knowledge and understanding of human interaction.
I come from New York City which is held by some to be overly permissive, so I very much look forward to your insights. I agree – “Vive la difference.”
Happy New Year
Roberta
January 5th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Gorgeous writing, love the imagery
January 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
A mood poem posing as prose.
Good effort, with images that abide even after the story is set aside.
(And I liked this much better than the more-recent aliens-lychee nuts piece…which just proves the subjectivity of literature… Yes, right word. This strikes me as literature where the other was just prose.)
January 7th, 2009 at 5:33 am
TW -
I don’t know the aliens-lychee nuts piece, but we must remember, prose is also literature.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Ah, your prose is always well crafted. I loved it.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I’d cut the first and last two paras and concentrate on the characters. Rose Marie, in particular, has lots of potential.
Currently, the story is suffocated by the very floral and somewhat self indulgent narrator.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
It had occurred to me that this poem is a double image, one superimposed on the other, maybe even two separate writers in a committee-decided merging. Jackson Bow’s comment has strengthened my having this point of view, although my evaluation of the strong points of the poem differs from hers.