How
does a window
find prickly snow

to show you a tree,
bare, fixed, stiff, proper
like a dramatist,
having cast all out
and drawn itself in
to show you these things

frost to the eye,
florescent light
on cement

cold to the touch
even when the weather's
mercilessly hot, nights
as thick as mesh steel screens
(humidity)

that water we never see
or hear running
but walk to to drink from, still
feeling thirsty

Where
green has a maid,
where small, speckled,
hand-me-down things
fly with color
through childhood,

lies Red to be
watched, as leaves are.
you see the changes,
Red, where youth was
worn like brown sacks,
rags of the poor

just yesterday
it was, i think,
the same to  me
as today, as
this autumn sky,
clouds thickening,

my youth, i mean
here

Dark, he was
Like the sun at night’s sky:
Children’s eyes
That saw the bright, red storm,
Red on hills
Gone past homes, washed away,
Gone again.

What was day
When all was gone again?
Strung, aflower,
Faces when children played:
Sand castles,
Washed by wind, made again
Small hands turn

Skies above.
They watch his small struggle;
“Play again,”
says one to him, a look
in and through
his eyes of blue shores still.
Came the waves

Of all colors;
This the day around him:
Green rivers
Around their homes, alive.
Blue saplings
That became of water.
And sand stayed.

9-12-‘11