I hear them talking about it in the women’s change room. I’m drying my hair after a swim and a woman says she has horses and someone else I can’t see who’s on the other side of the mirrors says Epsom salts soak is good for hemorrhoids – and for horses as well. I can’t picture fitting a horse into a bathtub. And then one of them mentions a place called: South Perfect. The words, South Perfect, make my tongue wet and my imagination go wild.
Sunshine hasn’t hit us here in Stratford in weeks. A roller coaster of snow squalls then no squalls and almost always grey, windy, icy, and cold. Be careful where you step you could fall and break your ass. That kind of weather. The wearing of sweaters and wool socks to bed weather. The don’t wear black because you’ll get full of salt dust getting into your car weather. The no wonder Snowbirds spend six months of the winter in Arizona weather.
And today, the sun is out. Somehow it grabbed and pushed and made its way from behind a constant mass of unrelenting cloud. Frozen locks, open. Mittens stay at home. Hair is revealed. A skip escapes in the walk of a grey haired man wearing an unbuttoned coat. A bus turns a corner with abandon. Everything’s on time. Everything glistens and makes you go outside.
Smiles appear – long overdue, hidden, forgotten. Sunglasses, yes, sunglasses appear. The glare. It’s been a long time in a sunless confinement. Eyes, like prisoners in exile squint with wonder and relief.
I decide to take it all in before it disappears. Errands can wait. The warmth of the sun blazing on my skin cannot.
I park myself in Sapori’s Ristorante for lunch – right in the window at a table drenched in it. A place for a cat – me, purring, purring. Green plants all around. A waterfall at my ear. Italian music playing. I’m in heaven. Correction – I’m in South Perfect. It doesn’t matter where it really is – South Perfect is where I am right here right now. And the stratecelli soup is divine.
Okay, quit teasing with your good writing in little vignettes, you need to theme and plot (different than scheme and plot, which is diabolical) and submit to editors. Please write more. PS. Epsom salts is good for tomaters, too. I've got both horses and 'maters and the salts does better for the taste of the tomaters than for the taste of the horses.
The deep-dive literary meditations presented as stories, poems, and essays in The American Poet Who Went Home Again, A Mosaic of My Soul at Work, have captivated and inspired readers ever since its first paperback publication in 2008.
