The Rough and the Smooth

     My mother-in-law claimed to be an optimist. If she looked at the sky she saw the blue patch and discounted the grey expanse.

     'There,' she would say. 'Enough blue to make a Dutchman a pair of trousers.'

     All afternoon the sky was heavy and then the blue came over the sea. Not much blue—just enough to make a Dutchman a pair of trousers. She was up there, looking down out of the sky, pulling the clouds apart.

     I didn't know Dutchmen wore blue trousers before I met her. I don't think I'd thought about what Dutchmen wore at all. Now there will always be Dutchmen and pieces of cloth in the sky. Floating around with my mother-in-law.

     My feet were bare and I had to look down from the sky on account of the sea holly, sharp in the sandy dunes. The sea hollys' leaves are the colour of water under the milky parts of the Dutchman's sky. Its flowers are the blue of his trousers. Its spikes are as long and relentless as grief. Beside it, late heart's ease showed purple and yellow, the colours of bruising.

     Heart's ease is a wild pansy. She didn't like pansies, they made her afraid on account of their bright little faces. She tried not to look too hard at the world on account of the thorns that stared out of people's eyes. She gazed up at the Dutchman who lived in the sky instead.

     Heart's ease has petals like pieces of silk.

     Sea holly's low and close to the sands and its leaves have a wild sculpted beauty.