By Louie Ferrera

While listening recently to the Crosby, Stills and Nash version of David Crosby’s “Guinnevere” I had a bit of a vision. Here’s what I saw.

She is all green cat eyes, her liquid gold hair doing the wind dance, waving wild and free like ribbons in the salty sea breeze, the wind and the waves and the hair and the eyes converge in a single burst of pinpoint brilliance, blinding and beautiful. Sweet Guinnevere raises her arms to the sky in celebration as she welcomes the gulls who are wheeling and diving and dancing above in the blue and the sea, as it has always been, as it always will be crashes and retreats and Guinnevere moves in sync with the timeless rhythms of the unknowable Pacific.

In my mind’s eye I can picture Guinnevere alone in her garden, the gentle rain that had been falling all night has ended leaving everything; the plants, the trees, the air, clean to sparkling. Having just awoken Guinnevere has come outside to welcome and to give thanks for this most glorious of mornings. She wears a simple white cotton nightgown, sleeveless and long, flowing nearly to her ankles, the cool wetness of the grass soothes her feet as Guinnevere swishes along and her eyes match the color of the grass which matches the color of her brilliantly painted toenails. She pauses beneath an orange tree and plucks a perfectly dimpled sphere of fruit, cold and wet to the touch after the evening rain. She breaks the skin of the orange with her fingernails (painted green of course), removing the peel in one long, lazy spiral. Guinnevere slowly savors each slice tasting of rain and sweet summer sunshine. Of course the peacocks are there too, glittering jewels that strut and preen in pairs, silent sentries to the blessing that is this day.

Guinnevere has a secret and only I am in on it. When she’s certain that no one is watching she disappears into the forest, making her way through a tangle of trees and underbrush util she arrives at her special place, an ancient abandoned stone cottage. The walls inside are cracked and weathered and covered with exquisitely detailed drawings of birds, each one is enclosed inside a pentagram shaped cage and only Guinnevere has the power to free them which she does and the wrens and thrushes, jays and hummingbirds burst forth from the confines of their five-sided prisons back into the glittering green of the forest. The birds are finally free and so too is Guinnevere.