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Ian Berger
Canterbury Green
She wakes before the sun and the seasons and the months and the days where the world is unfinished and gods flee in masses. The light wants for petals where the valleys, amuck of cause, ease the old sun now in her hardship down the steps of the green; her mornings sigh. The lady will greet the old sun and humor her all her watching. And the old sun will sit beside the lady and, just like she’s always done, see the day born in hues starved of shade—and the light open very suddenly, very beautifully. What of the lady opens and closes so, since she was a child, the old sun has not known. The days age fine some time past, where the lady will set them aside—very carefully, very beautifully.
From the night she will ask kindly all the colors of the old country. It is fine and it is young, the color of the prairies and the rivers and the bridges and the hills, careful of the continent now grown frail in all it’s ages, frighten the highlands of it’s want where the grey starts to swallow grey. She’ll paint the sky it’s grace owed and retrieve of daylight it’s white blankets.
The colors will ease now, half accidentally, the boughs of sycamores and the moon of her nodding slumbers. She greets now restless fathers and fawn of the westridge in brushstroke, carving of treelines newborn crowns to curtsey the wandering lands. Like when the old sun was young she will prepare breakfast, offer the night kind helpings and harvestings when he comes by to hand the colors away—leave a plate out for the old sun for when she descends the staircase and provision her the night’s well wishes between the same questions, the same answers, it matters little. The old sun will reiterate tales no younger than the birth of winter and the lady will listen while she paints. She will watch the world snore in its rest from the great windows of the house, and the two of them will talk.
When the day is satient of color the lady will rise to take the arm of the old sun, and walk her out, and see her rise, as she will for the new sun someday soon—and they will all watch, then. The colors will then sit, laid bare across the canvas as the old sun recites the image to the many wandering lands. The lady will touch up the days between meals. Hear the songs of the old country from the ends of the horizon bested now by the old sun, carrying the earth at her breast. The lady will walk then through the many gardens of earth, prepare supper through the evening by the time the door confesses it’s guests. The night, as he’s always done, will walk the old sun by the arm to the house in her weary knees. The lady will offer kitchen chairs and heavy plates and the night and the moon might stay for dinner. When she has packed them givings for the road, and cleared the table, and cleaned the dishes, and brewed a fresh pot, she will tuck the old sun and the old day to slumber. She will set a canvas to the easel by the great windows of the house for the morning, and she will sleep the ages dry.
Ian Berger is a writer and teacher in Wilson, North Carolina.
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