In a coal corner of the kitchen bare,
Violet
with blond locks sweeps the fireplace,
dusted
with old wasp wings, she weeps, disgraced;
a
Cinderella, broom beneath the stair.
She
lives in the attic of this grand house,
sleeping on iron bed, banished above,
while
once she was her father’s winging dove—
now
attended to by a graying mouse.
While
she scurries for her stepsisters sleeves,
her
head in dreams, she sings the brightest note,
making
mouse-errand trips to a moss knoll,
while
she shines crystal fluting and believes
a
prince she met in a field one day spoke,
inviting
supple women to a ball.
Though
her voice, remedy from beech and chaste,
grew
Black Hambourg vine up the grey stone wall,
childhood
whispering to her china doll,
a
father’s princess of unbroken lace.
She
as a maiden tethered the gold horse
in
the pasture with the sun for rose lamp
setting
overhead, she rode from her camp
of
hundred-year-old mansion Le Gall Gorse,
where
evil stepmother next made her home
with
her two daughters, wild moor hills of France
subduing
Violet ’cross Finistère
to
scrub the mansion floors with castile soap.
Her
face smudged with soot, Cinderella sang
a
dirge to the clock’s ticking minister.
Wood violet, dear child grown to woman,
knelt,
her wisps of rough long blond hair tied back,
nuanced
modesty on wrought iron stand,
her
purple nosegay resting to chasten
her
to repetitive token paintbrush,
she
imbued the long strokes, watercolour:
fiery
centre, water-purple, flower
pot—on
rippling landscape escaping lush.
Armorica
peninsula, clean drawn,
a
shuttered house close to the lashing sea
opened
its arms then, a hundred-years-old—
with
steady beech a shelter, tolerant
godmother
of old, whose ideas—tea,
brewed
black tannins in glass, wizened and cold.
She
made a thousand stitches, quilt patterns
growing
and dispensing with coming night,
unlike
the tormented filtered daylight
streams,
shafted through the ancient window, yearns
for
child, rests on eight pointed star, quarter
square,
patchwork, snowball, or four patch quilt block.
While
she is only their servant, a knock:
a
demanding order from stepmother.
Violet has garden robins for friends,
as
sweet as she is enduring and kind,
she
greets each red breast—named, welcomes them in
her
apron, to perch on the porch, the depths,
shadows
in the yard broken by wind chimes,
the
long-forgotten music wears not thin.
English violet on French soil, your feet
have
travelled over the moors, like your eyes
adore
cairns left as monuments, raised ties
to
the past, remembrance in tumuli,
like
a shrine of stones that weeps in colour
of
the earthen Noires Mountains in the south,
towering
over Muscadet’s rough cloth,
greenly
with cut crystal’s wine-like savour.
Aroma
of the sea’s sapidity,
you
are salt-crashing to sand, cresting white,
it
breathes from flecked clam shells in rocky coves
before
formations, the ocean crafting
of
millennia-wayfaring granite
in
its own way, as a religion’s trove.
This
fertile ground begat the Chardonnay
in
your father’s cupboard, variety
of
clusters on the vine, a toast lady-
like,
delicate vineyard velvet-leaf’s day.
The
violet, when overshadowed, hides
not
far down the lane, under hedgerows, near
a
row of mice, a pumpkin, makes the tears
of
the scullery maid’s coal face, crying.
She
sings a low tune, calls out, then the day
of
days, when in godmother-drafted dress,
meets
the prince again at the castle ball.
She
is a lavender-hued beauty stayed,
bedecked
with crystal necklace at her crest
of
throat, the clear gems in a dance with all.
Her dainty figure left her glass slipper,
after
waltzing, just bent, a dance-flower
petal-purple
under sunset’s power,
cream
sash imbuing eyes of cornflower
amid
elegant feet’s primal chaos
on
the parquet floors, dancing in their blooms,
hooves
and carriages en route to their tombs,
the
prince, her shoe in hand, would find her lot
then,
as purple emperor butterfly:
kneels
to put it on her foot, then rises,
so
the white bands and the orange-dot-hindwings,
blue-black
then crease the air like quiet cries
of
liberty. All around violets,
in
glittering castle where her veil reigns.
Emily Isaacson
