Gary LeBel

Tremors of Aquitaine

Eyes well apart and full of sparkling wickedness….
          —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Still I hear you gliding 
	 Through the spare, unfurnished rooms,
		The softly trailing rhyme 
Of your footsteps
	Always bare. . .

These North Carolina mountains are lush with April, part of a chain that distance transforms into a shimmering blue mirage. They’re grazing in a pasture as I pull over and approach the fence, two sleek, immaculate paints.

Now the stallion circles slowly round the mare while she’s busy grazing, her long, glossy mane swimming down her neck like a shine of water.

And then—it must have been a sudden gust that emboldened him—he sidles up and nuzzles gently against her as she lifts her head, resting his own lightly upon her withers.

It seems the afternoon has also paused to admire them, for time melts away in a rain of shade beneath the spreading oak that shelters both.

They court for some time as I rest my chin on the fence-rail whose weathered boards are strewn with lichen, its once-white wood splintered, worn and weathered bare in places to the hue of hammered silver.

Either respecting their privacy or shamed into modesty, I take my leave of them and head back to the car, for I’ve several hours of driving left. These high spring slopes and cradling valleys, the taste of young grass on the wind, and the very presence of these creatures are more than I could have asked for.

 "... give me serene-moving animals teaching content ..."

Back on the road, I remember and mumble that line to myself, one that had greatly impressed me the first time I read it, a phrase from Whitman, the notion of “content” seeming a paradigm of unselfconscious grace, of beauty that needs not stand before any mirror, of receiving each of these gifts like the warm and steady glow of a candle burning in a dark, quiet room.

It's late as lamplight steals faintly
	Over her paintings and first editions, 
		All of which 
She'd burn in an instant, she’d said,
	For a chance at love again 

	With a bottle of Chilean red,
Ella Fitzgerald's smooth seduction
	Conspires with rain to speak
Of the great cities I've known, boulevards 
That have long forgotten me 

	After a rain
Pavements come alive with a glister:
	I wonder, first love, wherever you are,
Do you sometimes part the curtains as I do
And gaze down empty streets?

If we chance to talk,
I'll not disappoint 
	For I know a dazzling thing or two,
But venturing too close to my abyss
Could prove injurious to you

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Note: The line “give me serene-moving animals teaching content” is by Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass, “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun.”

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About the Author

Gary LeBel is an artist-poet living in the greater Atlanta area whose poems have appeared in journals throughout the USA, the UK, Japan, and India. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage.

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