First Color After Many Grays

A poem for January into spring

The first light after many days of gray,

Pours in through the windows.

Yellow.

Distant:
Hades’ fingerling clouds
call her back
But she is here.

Golden.

Morning time, I
walk the
driveway;
wet.

Breathe deeply of last night’s rain
Smell moss: and green things: and brown
leaves stooped over

A deep beer-in-the-belly / wind in my nose
Feeling
but
more
strikingly
perhaps:

The dwarf Japanese Maple without its leaves
reaches out it’s branches:
lobster antennae / filaments of red
Hold
A thousand tear drops of water
Ten thousand

That catch the blue sky and houses,
like a ball in a mitt:
Persephone’s tears caught by those crustacean drags,
well worn and leathered
these…