Pippa popped up on my Facebook wall, after we'd been chatting over there. She wrote, and her words melted my funny little Kiwi heart. She had written me a poem. Memories from long ago during that first divorce of mine.
We used to talk for hours back then. Epic talks. And beach-walks with that beautiful Labrador of mine - still much missed. We talked wise woman talk ... tough but so good. So clear. That's the 'shit' she talks of .. .the times when we almost derailed our friendship. Crying or laughing. then simply talking our way back to being comrades, sisters, best friends forever.
She wrote:
Hey Di... miss you as always... just about to retire for the night. But our little conversation here tonight sparked me. So here is a wee gift for you... of course I haven't edited, so rough as always, but from the heart. Love you xxx
Who wouldn't love her right back. I'll even forgive her reference to that time, while moving a mattress, it collapsed under me as I leaned on it. She almost died laughing as I face-planted on the shag pile carpet. My head bounced off the floor on impact!!!
(Fortunately some red wine may have been consumed.)
If I'd died ...!! I told her. Later. After the laughter had stopped convulsing her body, the laughter that had rendered her speechless.
(She couldn't have called an ambulance. I swear it. I would have just died ... there on the floor. with her laughing too hard to give the address.)
How we laughed, back then, in the land of long ago.
Her poem ...
DI
Couldn’t resist
Sorry e hoa
To share such a rampant line:
Delicious as red-wine face-planting mattress-miss
Singing along
To magic music
Veins running red
Life-saving walks on beaches
Dog like abandon
Almost rolling in our own shit
To come out clean
Conversations shredding our lives
From before conception
And beyond limits
Dreaming outrageous dreams
That have come true
Faltered
Disintegrated
To make room for the exquisite chaos
Of life
Before death claims me
I know without doubt
I have lived!
Fearless
And fearful
In spite of
Because of
I will die a complete woman
Defeated, humiliated
To arise
Phoenix-like
To seize the dawn before anyone else is awake
Your smile, our clowning, stumbling shared
Moments
Brilliant jewels in the kaleidoscope
Of my life