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Mustard and Teals

Oh, I don’t know,

Mustard and teal was never my thing,

Until she brought the ivy in

And placed it on the hall table and said,

We’ve arrived.

The branches of oak outside

Filled the foyer window as we peeled the paper

From the walls.

Layer and layer,

Peel by peel,

Until, we arrived, as she said,

Clinging to the lath and plaster,

The last and original

Shred of

Yesteryear,

In mustard and teal green.

It has to go, I said.

I know, she said.

But wait, and with watercolor and brush

Dug from the sewing room box

She reproduced it on the back

Of a housewarming greeting card

In Yellow Ochre and Vermillion Green

As I peeled the mite soaked paper

To its demise.

When all was done

She snapped a photo of our shaker style foyer

Fit for a contemporary architectural digest,

Framed it with the wallpaper watercolor,

Hung it near the window,

With the oak branches peering

Into the hallway, watching,

The ivy on the entry table,

Sitting,

That said,

They’ve arrived.

One Night at Sawmill and Leadmine

I kicked my sandal across the patio.

I was tap, tap, tapping my leg

To rid it of the cramp obtained from sitting,

My toe hooked the unfooted shoe

And sailed it to the sky.

No one noticed, I convinced myself, at the bottle shop’s

Picnic tabled front, not-really-a-front-porch, porch,

But that concrete area poured to the doors of a store entrance

In a suburban strip mall

Made cool by the vibrant Mexican restaurant

With Mariachi music and Day of the Dead string lights

And the Community Theater spilling out

Its ethnically diverse cast and cast of audience,

Black clad stage managers and production assistants

Mixed with The Arts supporters and between-show actors,

Reviewers and podcast producers,

Friends and family at a preview showing

Of a local writer's work, thought provoking and timely.

My leg had cramped among all this talent

And I walked out into the warm September air

To stamp it out so I could return to offer

My accolades without a grimace.

Instead, I kicked my sandal to the sky. 

Wadded Up

Crumble you up  

Like a mistaken sheet in a sketch book,

Drain your wayward color from my life 

To puddled hues 

On the floor,

Toss the wad to the heap

Of misguided lines and realities,

Wants and what is there

Not meeting in the width of pencil lines,

Perspective a-kilter-ed,

Not meeting on the horizon line,

Not even a study in abstraction

But a distillation of the red of the heart

Seeping into the fibers of the paper

Rendering it failed and destroyed

And utterly useless

Except,

As filler in a hole. 

Sit (at Beaufort) on the Deck

Sit in the sun

The cold 

Sun

Steam from the cup 

Steam from the breath

Of the dog

Steam

Bouncing in smokestacks 

Across the sound

Down drafts 

A book of poetry

Falls thru the cracks of the wicker chair

Back to the wind retrieved 

Open random 

And read 

But the cold cuts 

And the sunset description doesn’t warm

But codifies the veins

In an oh-my-god image

Of sunset slices of blood

On the earth 

Standing looking at the horizon 

And relate 

And chase the dog inside 

To write 

He Said I Shared

He said I shared the color of his mother’s eyes,

And would I like to see?

A photo by chance, 

from under his bed,

I thought,

A walk to the shelf 

for an album of dust?

Perhaps. 

No. The eye,

that was made for,

and worn by, the her

that bore him.

From the Italian side, 

of brown eyes,

gone to hazel

with age,

The one lost in an accident,

only to be found

in the closet of

her son

Decades and eons later

following

her demise. 

I declined.