She walks, a straight line moving in silence through a room crowded with noise. Even as she frowns, she smiles, full lips set in a stasis of beauty that drifts, undisturbed, above the sound.
She sits, gently lowering at the knees, at the waist, unconcerned by gravity. Where others drop, exhausted, onto this seat and sink deeply into the comfort of its aging skin, she comes to rest, no impact seen upon it as she reclines.
She sleeps, with her unchanging smile, her left hand holding a place in the book she’d hoped to read. Her coat pale plaid against the seat’s uneven red, her breath hints of memories of oranges and roses.
She wakes, eyes gently open once more to bless all that she sees. A single sigh connecting her to the common flow of time, she rises as she set herself down, and once more yielding space to the noise of the mundane,
She leaves.
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She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek and o’er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
–Byron
Yup, I was echoing that. Byron’s better, but that particular moment (of someone I saw entering a space, taking a brief nap, and leaving) clicked for me into that five stanza form, which was a pleasant challenge to complete.
BTW, did you know that Byron wrote “She walks in beauty” as a lyric to “an ancient Hebrew melody” allegedly dating back to the Second Temple? (It wasn’t, of course, just a pseudo-Italian pseudo-aria.)
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