In The Moment…
I’m elevated and aroused, doused in scenic sensations
Tickling my ears are the sounds of vermilions chirping
Jasmine incense redolence pure pleasance
The lasting impressions of a passerby’s stirring smile
while waving back at the doe-eyed carefree child
There’s a box lying somewhere.
Somewhere in a dusty cupboard.
Somewhere behind old paper, older words, and wounds older still.
Somewhere no one can find it.
I think about it, sometimes.
Sometimes, when I breathe.
Sometimes, when I exhale puffs of grey smoke and let those rashes bleed.
Sometimes, when in the dead of night, my lashes are wet.
Sometimes, when I’m looking somewhere, lost and stumble upon a sunset.
Apples and peaches,
Magentas and vermilions,
Pearls and emeralds,
all strewn across a cobalt, teal sky.
The sky you loved.
I drown in it when no one’s looking.
No one would understand, anyway.
I miss them reflected in that shard of glass we held together.
The one that broke, in giggles and hysterics, that very summer.
The one that I, upon a whim, hid in a wooden chest.
The one that I, with trembling hands, unlatched years later.
Long after you had left.
And it’s much too late
to go back
Much too late.
HIGH SUMMER
End of July
The ridges, moraines,
mountains and valleys,
the meadows and farms of
Upstate New York are a living
mosaic of yellows and tans, vermilions
and browns framed by the forests of deep
Lincoln green which, a month beyond
solstice, mark the halcyon days of the high
tide of summer, when Great Lakes and
Finger Lakes and lakes in between all
shimmer with color and the bees in my
garden all hover like helicopters brimming
with cargo for constructing a base in some
foreign war zone where the color of summer
is a deep reddish-brown, staining the sands
and the streets of their cities with
bloodshed and sorrow
But my good wife and I,
bathed by the sunshine and glad
for our lives, even in an era consistently
subject to car-bombs and lies, listen to the
murmur of a bountiful season, hear it
humming and chanting like the gathering
voices of wind-song and women singing their
devotion to the whispering rhythms of sunlight
and soil, their songs of thanksgiving
pulsating softly, like a new baby’s heart,
like the generous breezes of
a new mother’s breath
from afar, leaves like uncounted catatonic fires
huddled close
pinned to the chill air
a pointillist’s love affair with a hundred shades of red
the ground is a fresh wound, edgeless
a breeze worries the boughs
stokes the hanging flames into quivering
crimsons
scarlets
vermilions
renegade ambers
a slow burn resumes
accompanied by a susurrus of sighs
a dirge for a season
and the summer sky, now turned slate,
is cremated
It shimmers
like a painting—
gypsy fireflies
in evening’s afterglow—
scents of citronella
on patios, pastel drinks
and melted ice cream—
musk melon of moon
oozing above trees.
We whisper
in dark cliques
as a faint ring
of city lights
vermilions western sky—
late summer breeze
turning cool,
murmuring softly—
all is lost.
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