Why cannot blue be enough? Light in the sky, dark in the sea, the shades between. The green of fields, red clover, buttercups. Bridal white of apple blossoms, burial earth, hawk's feather, snakeskin. Monarchs, Anita, feeding on purple aster, fluttering up, sun glowing orange, brown, bronze through black edged wings, twenty joining twenty joining a hundred, down, up, over, from color to color to Mexico.
Clouds booming over the washed woods, blue sun, Finn eats chop suey from a pot while I shave. Six months to dismantle the dead rooms of a marriage, down to a borrowed tent, patches of snow, and invisibly, all around us, sap rising in its own sweet time.
April, Maine
Alexis
Icons, coal mines, Ten Mile Creek, the Monongahela, a long way to this house by the Kennebec, sitting erect, brushing your hair, fire and peace in your cheeks, preparing for the further steppes of feeling.
Back In Town
Billy Frailly's got a new shirt, shaved and walking down the road ready for anything. When I was in fifth grade Billy powered his bike up Church Hill (black Stetson, yellow kerchief). I helped him shovel out Mrs. Cowell's parking place. He did most of the work, but he split the money fifty-fifty. He's an outcast now; no frontier he can reach. But he's not crying, and we know there is no virtue, only consequence and the sometimes music of a new shirt.
Woodstock
Bluejay Feather
Bluejay feather in the grass. Something was here once, A flash of color, a harsh cry, and it was gone. The feather remains: tough, precise, useful