Sweet Adelaide

Ken Kistler

Sweet Adelaide

Grandmother A. had always been a plain woman.

Her gaze steady, able and implacable even as that

young girl who stared back through  the scattered

memory of those who knew her then – Plain, solid

“not one to rattle anybody’s cage” Uncle Ed said, yet

in the back of the chapel there sat a white haired gent

bent, back aching on the hard, hard pew, and remembered 

in the midst of the droning secular service – remembered the

splendor of that harvest,  and Adelaide’s skin, luminous, satin

velvet under his trembling farm-roughed fingers – mystic skin

gathering each cloud of his storm troubled mind sweeping it all

away on the stiff breeze cooling them lying together in splendor

Oh that harvest, of the splendor long ago – as Adelaide blossomed 

in his heart as no other ever would or did. 
On the service droned to its end. 

Her grandchildren safe-grown, scurry-filed past –a parade of condescending ignorance – Smirking at the dozing bent gent, sated smile, mouth open, head flung back, arms opened.

And finally. Alone, in the emptied chapel he rose, walked to her coffin, held the edge of the smooth wood –  under hands gentled with age and bent in open reverence to his forever secret Adelaide 

He, un-named, unclaimed lover of his Adie. Keeper of their stupendous scattered harvest splendor. 
His luminous Adie, only  now rippling his title in the dancing dust of memory sunbeams. 
Her voice now, 

clear as then, 

releasing 

their secret 

smile

swirling
on the moving breeze, her hair lifting, tousled again as she lay on 
satin-smooth-as-her-skin 

back on that harvest plain – 
Sweet Adelaide chuckling now, at the young fertile farmer 

above her time and time again moving,  moving,  moving 
where her earnest husband could find neither time nor place

Finally -trilling on the moving breeze, clear as a songbird, his rightful title,
In their rightful time. 
Now.

Grandfather. 

~

The Sunday Whirl