Beautiful

“Look at her,
she’s beautiful like a Gypsy,”
he told my mother,
right in front of me,
this twice-removed uncle of mine,
and my cheeks turned into red roses
at the compliment that I found then
outrageous
and now
outstanding.

It was at his older daughter’s wedding,
in a white July
a July of silver
and white peonies.
I had a blue dress,
a blue like a single tear
of some distant sea,
a blue like the sky
reflected into a single drop
of dew on a white petal.
I was twenty-three,
but I could’ve been eighteen
or sixteen,
just the same for me.

He no longer breathes
the air of this world,
this twice-removed uncle of mine,
but these particular words of his
still sing to me,
at the most unexpected moments,
always bringing
a whiff of summer with them,
of that summer when I was a young rose,
beautiful like a Gypsy.


“Beautiful like a Gypsy,” he had said
and I knew he meant the ideal Gypsy,
the free soul,
the one that dances flamencos in her
ruffled colourful skirts,
on the scapes of our hearts,
to the clicking of her castanets
and the tinkling of her gold,
not the one that begs on street corners,
or steals,
or kills.

I wonder if that beautiful Gypsy
exists anywhere other
than in the exotic notions
of romantic people
like Fleetwood Mac,
and Van Morrison,
and the likes.
But I know what he meant,
and I will always remember his words
because, for me,
she exists,
that beautiful Gypsy,
in that exquisite summer of long ago,
and in all the summers of my heart,
where I will always be,
twenty-three.