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Holiday
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
61 Holiday We slept and woke to the sound of rhythmic surf. Across the room, my friend lay with her book; I listened to the spacious hour, its humane breath on the room, grown large with distant water. In that monastic calm we took ourselves lightly, rose and ate, walked the half moon beach and indulged our ankles with bracelets of kelp. Underwater, the day kept fluttering open, fluttering open— banded butterfly with its eye-concealing stripe, blue angel nibbling on a sponge— and then the boatman put his back to the reef and returned us to shore, where the afternoon waited palmate, rinsed, thatch-roofed. Day moon overhead, we played chess, long, quiet games, and napped below giant fronds that fanned us and whispered easy, easy, the way you soothe a high-strung mare, so she can drop her head and graze on a long lead— so slack she thinks the groom has set her free. ...