Luck, by Grace Marie Grafton

Villa R, by Paul Klee (Switzerland). 1919.

Luck

The red lane to the lyrical boat tied at an angle to the wharf, a geometrical boat full of rooms tucked between grooves.  When he looks into the V’s, vistas open at eye level: pastures accustomed to grass’s green trim and ruminant animal sound.  It’s only a façade but he understands it’s to help him pause his conqueror’s stride and become instead a visitor from another country.

And the rooms themselves – he fumbles with the key, it lets him into a rose-walled room that leans slightly to the left toward the replica of a gold sun, even though the white mountains through the window make him shiver and notice the cool blue floor that mounds up under his feet.  

Suddenly he wishes that nobody had sent him here, he wishes this were simply a spontaneous villa his peripatetic wanderings led him to, like a lucky nickel, found in childhood, on someone else’s driveway.

Grace Marie Grafton

Grace Marie Grafton’s most recent book, Jester, was published by Hip Pocket Press. She is the author of six collections of poetry.  Her poems won first prize in the Soul Making contest (PEN women, San Francisco), in the annual Bellingham Review contest, Honorable Mention from Anderbo and Sycamore Review, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Poems recently appear in Basalt, Sin Fronteras, The Cortland Review, Canary, CA Quarterly, Askew, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Ambush Review.