Awakening slowly in morning shadows,
Céline senses what might now ripen and
grow within her. The earth is ringing out.
By obscure transitions, affirming visions in
the girl’s self-determining mind are revealing
new depths to her evolving character.
The nameless hour has arrived, that
mesmerizing, eternal hour, when children
cease to look vaguely at the sky.
What was previously dreaming confusedly
in her eyes now takes on a more determined
glint; her resolute grin also declares it.
While still half asleep, a single delightful
odour communicates itself, returning the
nine-year-old to an autumn lived long ago.
Unaware that the Madeleine returned Proust
to his childhood, she suspects memories will
awaken and breathe when odours are good.
The bitter, sticky fragrance of rice cakes
cooking on the breakfast fire has returned
Céline to her to grandmother’s kitchen.
She shakes herself awake, blaming the sweet
odour on a dream, but she has bounced off
the intimate memory of grandmother’s cakes.
Her sense of it is sleepy, but she’s aware
that this odour is beginning to introduce
her to visions of a life she has not yet lived.
Then, unaccountably, a series of echoing
sounds accompany the scented reverie and
her potential universe unravels further.
It’s no vague hint; it will sleep in her heart
forever, or until she is rocking her worn,
old body in a warm rocking chair.
Attuned to the fountain’s sweet harmony,
she imagines the multi-layered sounds are
multiplying with endless new variations.
The gathering vision washes over her in
soothing waves of strange calm, mixing
a taste of knowledge with hints of mirth.
She discovers these sounds to be edible and
having feasted on her memories, she now lifts
her head to facilitate her feeding on the future.
She can smell all there is to know
roasting in the sky. No words come
but she vocalises the amiable sounds.
Breathing rhythmically, it is no surprise to
her that life can be sensitised in this fashion;
she has played reverie like this before.
Céline knows how to curl away, go
deep within, sing in her head and
rejoice in opportunities of solitude.
She bids her sleep-filled body to stir,
re-affirm who she is and discover what
the welcoming sounds have in store.
No answer comes, but fortified and grateful
for the magical reveries she surrenders to a
forest that will be wild beyond her knowing.
Drinking in the dawn like a cup of spring
water, she prepares to enter the heart of this
forest by vowing to stay close to her heart.
