Ruth: a tale

Ruth enters the room with a handful of jonquils. Their scent fills the air. When we sit together, thoughts rise like fingers lifting and returning to the palm. The word ‘palm’ is exotic and may not apply to the hand, which is adorned with four fingers and a thumb, a back as well as a front. Hence we say ‘the hand of necessity’ rather than ‘the palm of thought’, though neither clarifies what the other implies. I crisscross my fingers and thoughts. I crisscross the named streets of Whangārei, similarly waylaid. I find I traverse all streets, all avenues of mind, discovering what’s common and uncommon. It’s like a river that can go wherever it pleases yet settles on a particular riverbed, resting and supported there. Water that flows has somewhere special to advance, navigating a downward course. A boat wants a keel. This is a means of retaining buoyancy, honouring the movement of time and the sea. Things turn one way and then another: a tide, a boat, a sail, an unwieldy rudder, spraying water, a medley of thoughts. Ruth holds them in the palm of her hand and thus things arrive at the same place together.