Her silver eyes are poignant roses, painted under a full moon's slivering wane. They shine, and grasp at the air surrounding. Her beauty melts the wisest hearts, the blackest souls, the coldest shuddering memories. It melts into ashes, and the ashes are swept far out to sea into the staggering waves--fraying only slightly--as the wind carries them wherever the wind may go. So goes her love, fleeting like the skiff's of fisherman searching for oyster shells, looking for all the pearls a fisherman could find. Her love, it was bitter. The pearls she found, she kept, and then threw back to sea, rich, pure teardrops of the watery ocean falling like blankets onto sandy ground. And the wharf's she let her sails down in, they become filled with excitement. Once, I heard in Monterey, she dropped anchor for well over a month, but that was the longest I had ever heard her stay. She was colorless, an escape artist, transforming from city to city, and her eyes guided the way. They locked her lover forever within the deep wells of her soul, and in the wharf's, the docks where she nested, she became something of a legend.
Fisherman, in the wharf's, the sea-men she trapped under those silvery placid eyes, like snow in a December morning or the ornate oriental flowers in China--rising above all else on thin leafy stalks--they would tell me, she was a miracle. A man once said to me, 'If God had given the Virgin Mary a daughter instead of a son, this would be her'. They would say, "Pure as trees, but more devilish than sharks,". These fisherman, they were the ones who knew her best. Stealing away from their boats, to get a glimpse of her--and if they ever laid eyes on her--well, that was a whole new story entirely, because when looking in her deep eyes, that heavenly silvery blue, almost teal in hue, even the strongest men became defenseless. Their wallets would open wide, like a gaping mouth full of teeth, and when she had finished their wallets would be toothless, just empty black holes creased in leather. And then, when you thought she was through with you, she would release a thin smile, and let the smile inch towards your relaxed face, and give the sweetest kiss on the cheek, leaving a fingerprint of lipstick on your face. She gave life to the men's faces, brought them into a state of heavenly existence, and when they left her lair, they walked away tall and full, men with confidence and poise--and the legend of her being said no man would ever remain the same. She turned cowards into warriors, fools into sages, and so she Became, and in doing so, never really Was.
She existed in fairy tales more-so than she ever existed in realities. In so many of our realities we never were able to see her, and the lucky ones who ever chanced contact were as content as Hindu cows--and the others, the ones who never did have the chance to meet her as I did, had to force her image into their imaginations. There was something about the thought of a heavenly angel of a woman that touched and opened a fisherman's heart, and when her dark black, milky long hair, rested on your body, that feeling was more than all the men whom ever existed needed, and would ever need. She gave them hope, a new reason to rise to the morning dew, and the early morning fresh catch. And so, the stories of her spread, started in some far north land, Canada, maybe, and stretched all along the West, through the California Coast, so that every man who knew how to clean a fish knew of the 'Fisherman's Folly', as they began to call her. And so, in this wave of spirits, I reckon Roxanne became more legend than woman, and that suited all of us just fine.
