Entry to guestbook,
VRBO Mainstreet Wabasha, MN
Friday, September 6, 2024, 0116 AM
My goodness! So
excited are we!
Yes, this is a comfortable
place in every aspect. Yes. Yes. But a truly remarkable event has just now occurred
which we must now relate.
We were sitting on a bench
below the great bridge. All quiet, dark, could even see The Milky Way. Lovely.
Oh, what I must add is that
we have been up and down the valley –searching for clues against, each of ours,
vague and arguable, ancestries. Courthouses, churches, newspapers and so forth
as far down as Dubuque, for heaven’s sake. Yes. Yes.
But little kernels
gathered therein manifested themselves to our eyes, unbidden, here on the river
banks tonight.
It began - in the
peculiar silence that can accompany this valley in the night – with, a ripple.
A ripple! Yes! Yes!
And she emerged through
the petite contractions like a god manifesting to us!
A brilliant instant in
the light reflected from the bridge above,
She arced out of the depths
slowly and majestic. Yes!
Looking directly at us
as if we were complicit in a singular crime! Yes. Yes. We were.
She exposed marvelous
throat and breasts and yes, an umbilicus, a naval, waving her hands with grace
unpossessed by our ambulatory brethren, she skulled the waters at our feet for
a moment or two.
We were then projected
backwards, necessarily, to our studies in the dim and dusty libraries.
Rumor, inference, odd
and ends, suggestions – even Mark Twain in his riverboat captain days,
references, yes, yes. Not up here but further downstream –say, Lansing Iowa,
maybe McGregor…we have, as well, captured references to the legendary apparition.
Just such little
kernels, such self-conscious tidings…
Twain refers to these
notions in “Life on the Mississippi” but he is not alone.
This river holds magic!
She lounged back in the
ripples. Her red lips, blonde hair in the currents, her long arms graceful.
She blew us a playful
kiss and said something we could not understand –but, we live in Duluth MN – it
clearly sounded Finnish in cadence and tongue, and she arced backwards then down
to the depths. Her long bifurcated tail slapped the surface with final
authority,
Yes! Yes! Surely this
must be the water’s princess –told of by Twain, settlers, and natives alike.
The only, the legendary, Birgitta.
And we were all there for
that one incomparable moment.
The circle of ripples
fanned out and the slap of her tail echoed against the bridge.
There was a flash down
there in the depths.
And she was gone.
Yes! Yes!
-Jeff Smith, Duluth, MN
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