1.
Wrap me in colors
for I would see
myself seen
as I am, parceled
by sunlight
into districts
of desire, marshes
of dream,
blue seas of renewal.
For colors tell
all, keep no secrets,
yellow sapphire,
blood-brown amber
with the sun
still in it, so many
years, the tiny
bright sky in the heart
of the diamond,
mother’s ring,
everything reminds.

2.
Even now someone is writing
a note to me from a distant city:
“I dreamt great sheets of green,
not grass, not any special thing,
just sheets of color. So I knew
right then that I was you.”

3.
These things are permanent.
Colors fade but color never does.
Reach out and take what you need,
ivory of your steady hand.

4.
In the hills some men are saying
prayers to help the world go round,
and with their words or sounds
or brains or breaths, who knows,
they fumble beads with their thumbs,
little ones in lapis, broad in bone.

5.
Everything we say
has color too.
Or hear someone remark,
or just the weather
sounding its way
unceasingly our own.
On these grey winter days
open the dictionary,
it will be our crayon box enough.

11 January 2021