Plashing

 

I was in Italy with my former neighbors from Boston, Carol and Gary. They now lived in Maine, I lived in Switzerland. We were spending a reunion week in the town where Carlo Collodi, the man who created Pinocchio lived.

We had escaped the souvenir shop with long-nosed souvenirs, not just of the puppet, but many of George W. Bush (it was 2005) with a long nose and were in the gardens of the estate of a minor aristocrat.

 The gardens were lush and Gary commented on the plashing fountain.

"You used the word 'plashing'." I said.

"I've loved that word ever since I read Amy Lowell in..." he said.

"Patterns." I filled in. I knew Gary as my neighbor, a good cook, a minister, a dog owner, a man with a sense of humor, with depth of thought, but I never knew he read poetry.

Merriman-Webster defines the word as:

• to cause a splashing or spattering effect 
• to break the surface of (water)

Over the years whenever I used it in writing, which wasn't often, an editor would change it to splashing. I gave up trying to use it conversation.

This morning I saw plashing in print for the first time since that conversation with Gary a couple of decades ago. Mary Gordon wrote about "plashing fountains" in her novel Payback, which prompted this blog.

This morning, my husband and I were talking about words and I mentioned I was writing this blog about the word plashing.

Rick: Splashing?

Me: Plashing.

Rick: What does it mean? I never heard it. (He is extremely well read).

I told him and suggested he read this blog. "read my blog" is a joke between us.

Plashing is a word that may have its dictionary meaning, but for me it represents not just a loved story poem, a memory for a late friend, a lead-in to thinking about words and their meanings, thoughts about words falling out of use in a language, origins from different languages. 

As a writer words are important to me and by exchanging a word in my work for another, I can change the image. As much as I would love to use plashing, I imagine my reader would think it was a typo.

---

I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the
buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he
clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon--
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the
Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for? 

Note:  I have no idea why I can't get rid of the underlines. I assume that it is the work of the malicious creature that lives in my laptop and does strange things to my work every now and then. Or maybe he loves the word plashing too.