Rose in the Sea-wind
A/N: I wanted to write a quick one-shot, and I found this poem among many in the collections of a book I just recently bought – I really liked it and just went with it. The little bits of poetry in here are from the poem The Rose by Theodore Roethke, a truly great American poet. He happens to be my favorite poet of all-time. Enjoy, everyone!
Paring: USxUK
Rating: T, for implied sex.
Summary: Arthur and Alfred find love and remembrance easily on the soft waves of the Atlantic on a fading summer day. A poem-based fic.
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There are those to whom place is unimportant,
But this place, where sea and fresh water meet,
Is important–
Where the hawks sway out into the wind,
Without a single wingbeat,
And the eagles sail low over the fir trees,
And the gulls cry against the crows
In the curved harbors,
And the tide rises up against the grass
Nibbled by sheep and rabbits.
Alfred loves this place. He loves the sea and the lakes, the oceans and the rivers. He loves the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells – he loves the land he represents. Alfred F. Jones loves the United States of America. He finds—so easily!—that he is lost in the beautiful things his land has to offer. With certainty, he knows that he is loved, that he loves in return, and that he is oh-so important in the world. Everything he could ever want is in the palm of his hand.
A time for watching the tide,
For the heron's hieratic fishing,
For the sleepy cries of the towhee,
The morning birds gone, the twittering finches,
But still the flash of the kingfisher, the wingbeat of the scoter,
The sun a ball of fire coming down over the water,
The last geese crossing against the reflected afterlight,
The moon retreating into a vague cloud-shape
To the cries of the owl, the eerie whooper.
The old log subsides with the lessening waves,
And there is silence.
He'd been at the shore, that day. Alfred was watching the sun set on the horizon, watching the waves surge up to meet his bare feet, when Arthur had suddenly appeared next to him, clutching his hand. Their feet dug into the wet, browned sand while the salty waters normally separating them lap up in an attempt to drag them out to drown, desperate for love – desperate to end their love. But they would not allow it. "It's beautiful." "You're beautiful."
"It is," Alfred agreed. "I love coming to the shores." "I love it when you're here with me to see this."
"I enjoy the sandy beaches. It's rare, when I get to see things like this." The world was indeed painted in bright, warm sepia, not old, but new – bright and cheerful and somehow holding all the colors it doesn't hold.
Arthur looked up at Alfred with pleading eyes. "Would you please sail with me, before the sun sets?"
They left the dock on a sailboat together, the winds carrying them over the soft waves, delighting in the way it tousled their hair like a child would clutch to their father's locks, imagining them as a lion's mane, to ride on their backs through the African savannah.
As when a ship sails with a light wind–
The waves less than the ripples made by rising fish,
The lacelike wrinkles of the wake widening, thinning out,
Sliding away from the traveler's eye,
The prow pitching easily up and down,
The whole ship rolling slightly sideways,
The stern high, dipping like a child's boat in a pond–
Our motion continues.
Their motion was a delicate balance between sensual, bodily things and the movement they made moving forward. The movement of the boat, and the movement of their nations marching steadily onward into the future; their relationship developing and deepening, all the more beautiful because of the moments they share, like this moment, on the floor of the sailboat, where they are unabashed and unashamed by their lack of clothing, where their skin heats and doubles and becomes the most sweet unbearable feeling, needed and desired – their heated cries the sweetest song, matching the gulls hanging in the fading light.
The moon showed its face, the sky darkening. Under its guidance, they placed their clothes on their bodies and stood, watching it, loving the beautiful silence. They fell asleep and woke with the sun, the sea-wind whipping their faces once again, though they lay on the sullied floor in the place they'd touched the afternoon before this very morning, staring up at the sky until it was noon and the sun was high up in the sky again.
And this rose, this rose in the sea-wind,
Stays,
Stays in its true place,
Flowering out of the dark,
Widening at high noon, face upward,
A single wild rose, struggling out of the white embrace of the morning-glory,
Out of the briary hedge, the tangle of matted underbrush,
Beyond the clover, the ragged hay,
Beyond the sea pine, the oak, the wind-tipped madrona,
Moving with the waves, the undulating driftwood,
Where the slow creek winds down to the black sand of the shore
With its thick grassy scum and crabs scuttling back into their glistening craters.
While Arthur watched the sky dreamily, enjoying the way the boat dipped and lifted with the rocking ocean, the way he used to spend his younger years, remembering his longing days of escaping war-torn and hateful Europe, Europe, who hates him. He found that route, found North America, new land – found the man that, through all the pain, would bring him these wonderful days of sex and love on the open waters, memories to keep for many years, memories to live by and love as much as he loves his America, his Alfred.
And Alfred imagined Arthur, so desperate to escape stuffy, boring Europe, defying and breaking away onto the open waters, which loved him and he loved it in return, where he flourished and strove to better things, his Navy building up until it was something so fearsome, nation and human alike would dream about it in particular nightmares. The rest of the world was dead. They knew not how to love the way these two did, as Alfred saw it – because they were so alive, so wonderfully alive! He truly believed that this was an unbreakable, continuous thing, these lovely afternoons on the beach or the sailboat with Arthur, enjoying him as Arthur, where he was just Arthur, and he himself was just Alfred, and things were so human he felt normal. He felt like things were a little average in his life – something he'd desired, being so very abnormal, as a great nation himself.
And I think of roses, roses,
White and red, in the wide six-hundred-foot greenhouses,
And my father standing astride the cement benches,
Lifting me high over the four-foot stems, the Mrs. Russells, and his own elaborate hybrids,
And how those flowerheads seemed to flow toward me, to beckon me, only a child, out of myself.
Alfred couldn't help but think of that beautiful place Arthur had made him so long ago, as a child. A beautiful garden to remember him by, filled with roses of multiple colors and strange variations Alfred wasn't quite sure of the differences between, which he found strangely cultivated and kept in perfect condition, even when Arthur and Alfred went through their phase of hatred expressed both physically and mentally. And for some reason, he felt this strange, for it was not reality, but a dream – a dream so real he often believed it to be an indefinite truth in reality.
What need for heaven then,
With that man, and those roses?
Alfred's memories of this personal garden were so precious. While the details of his dream were sparse, he remembered that much, at the least. He remembered how sweet and bright the garden was, how he often thought he'd heard the strange, tittering and heart-felt laugh of the British nation across the Atlantic in the air, making him turn around in surprise, questioning his sanity, as he catches a glimpse of bright green eyes, glowing behind his eyelids. And Alfred would always wake with a start as Arthur was suddenly in front of him, invading his space and his senses, pressing their lips together in sudden, sweet contact.
Imagine his surprise when Arthur did this in the waking-world, in the garden in the back of his house, where the soft, loamy soil had been growing budding roses in pinks, whites, and in abundance: reds. Red roses, for love, and for his beloved England. This was truly perfection in its finest form, as perfection rarely shows itself perfectly in society – or, at the very least, obviously rather than perfectly.
Near this rose, in this grove of sun-parched, wind-warped madronas,
Among the half-dead trees, I came upon the true ease of myself,
As if another man appeared out of the depths of my being,
And I stood outside myself,
Beyond becoming and perishing,
A something wholly other,
As if I swayed out on the wildest wave alive,
And yet was still.
And I rejoiced in being what I was:
In the lilac change, the white reptilian calm,
In the bird beyond the bough, the single one
With all the air to greet him as he flies,
The dolphin rising from the darkening waves;
Arthur laced their fingers together, looking over at him finally. "I'm glad to have found you."
Among the nations, they had played favorites – sometimes for, sometimes against. They would admit to this. In history, England often opposed American advances into European matters. Foreign affairs, he decided, were not something the United States should become involved it. Europe saw it this way as of late as well, Alfred noted.
But he knew that he was wanted as a human being, as Alfred, so the pain—still stinging his heart to this day at the very thought of being unwanted—was ignored, and on he went, trying to restore America's relations with other nations. Arthur, along with the United Kingdom, always seemed to forgive him. And for this – for a friend, a lover, and an ally to the end – he was extremely grateful.
"I'm glad you found me, too," Alfred whispered in Arthur's ear, his other hand resting on his stomach. "I'm so glad."
"I'm glad for times like these," Arthur and Alfred tell one another just what they are grateful for. They never once said anything of what they'd gained from knowing one another, but they knew what each would say, and knew that is was fairly obvious why the other would not say them aloud. These secrets were for their connected hearts, souls, bonds of deeper connection no one quite understands, and the open ocean upon which they drift, like two lovers in their joined lives.
Things had been so hectic at times. He was simply glad to say that, though he struggled as a nation at the moment, Alfred was a simple, happy human being living a life of beauty and love, and really – how many times could he say this without getting sick of hearing it?
The answer was none. He could never get sick of hearing that. It brought him joy and warmth again just to hear the words inside his head, telling him, 'You're lucky.'
Arthur's thoughts were very much the same.
And in this rose, this rose in the sea-wind,
Rooted in stone, keeping the whole of light,
Gathering to itself sound and silence–
Mine and the sea-wind's.
They were silent with the salted wind. Thought came upon them to return to the docks – they'd been out for more than a day. With this in mind, the two sat up from their places on the sullied and love-worn floor and directed their sailboat towards shore, to return to land, where life was a little more difficult, and remembrance was harder for the both of them. They would manage, though, as they had always managed; they would struggle and break through, to hold each other as humans, rather than nations, to feel normal and loved. "I love you."
"I love you, too."
These words were so easily spoken out in their favored environment.
And as they stand together towards the front of the boat, looking at the dock not too far from them now, Alfred holds Arthur tight – his red rose in the sea-wind.