Rhiannon

Everything feels like a Stevie Nicks/ Fleetwood Mac concert lately. I walk around campus with my ipod dangling from my hip and I could swear I see people dancing along with “Dreams.” The old, slouched man next to me on the bus playing his hand held solitaire game that probably hasn’t been sold in years. He doesn’t know it but he is desperate to sing “Silver Springs” at Karaoke. “Rhiannon” has traveled with me to Calculus I and to General Chemistry lab. Perhaps its soothing sounds are what kept me from snatching a boy’s cell phone from the table, throwing it to the floor, and driving the spike of my high heel straight through it. It was vibrating every five seconds. I felt like I was trying to write on a motel bed that took quarters.

The world seems to be stretching around me. Yawning and reaching for its toothbrush - shaking winter off its back like an Orca flinging a harbor seal. Two days of warm weather was a little tease. I am looking forward to seeing spring turn into summer here. I don’t think I have ever been in Oregon later then the 1st week of May. I saw a Bald Eagle outside my apartment window yesterday. Nothing else makes me so homesick. “Like an eagle in the sky she caught my eye.” I am an Alaska summer girl and I even miss the winters. But I am in a state that has tulip trees and with such a fantastic sounding tree how could you not be excited?

“Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn’t you love to love her
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?
All your life you’ve never seen a woman
Taken by the wind.
Would you stay if she promised you heaven ?
Will you ever win?
She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark
And when the sky is starless”

It doesn’t feel starless – even on these overcast Portland nights. I know there is a small star blinking – “green and grey.” I like its small twinkles. Like my grandfather used to say (much to my six year old annoyance), “Twinkle, twinkle little star how I wonder what you is.” I do wonder what it is but not too much. The star might go out or burst. Either way – it isn’t my decision. It is way more fun to be the “cat in the dark.” Or the darkness, with one small star – pulsing so I don’t forget.

"Will you ever win?"