Sunday Afternoon Daydreaming
Ever seeking blissful enlightenment...
Continually I stare out my window,
searching for a rainbow,
an escape from this dreary rock
called Earth, while I play my clarinet,
then lose interest and look for my hairbrush.
Elusive as the waters of youth, the hairbrush
remains hidden, but I find a rock
nestled in the red velvet of my clarinet
case, that must have fallen through the window
unnoticed, as I waited for enlightenment
in the guise of a rainbow.
The sharp edges of the rock
cut my finger, blood dripping down my clarinet
like some kind of gruesome enlightenment.
Forgetting about the hairbrush,
I throw the rock through the window,
glass shards breaking into hundreds of tiny rainbows.
Cold wind rushes through the window
like a porthole opened by the rock.
Notes float from the clarinet,
now lying on the floor, a rainbow
of sound, as if to bring enlightenment
finally, but still I can’t find the hairbrush.
I give up my search for the hidden hairbrush
and turn to the blood from the rock,
all over my expensive clarinet,
but I don’t care because I need enlightenment
and soon the tiny rainbows
cloud my vision, so I walk to the window.
The sky outside the window
is cloudy gray, without a rainbow,
but several clouds look like my lost hairbrush.
In the grass below, the blood-covered rock
is my only key to enlightenment
as notes still fly through the ruined clarinet.
I try to close the rock-broken window,
through a rainbow of pain as I listen to the ghostly clarinet...
Enlightenment, like the hairbrush, lost forever.
(c) 1999 Ann Lesley Hamvas
