Blue and Yellow

Winter past, the sun and sky

Yellow brightens vaulted blue

Look the clover’s coming now

The dew like tears until they dry

Flowers bud then sudden bloom 

Blue and yellow dreams again

This year enchant to view.

Tulips planted long ago

By tender hands and lovingly

Paired two colors side by side

Like Sun and sky, you said to me, 

Oh! such beauty yellow and blue

There my love is life that’s free.

But now In fear hide underground 

This cannot be their destiny.

When stags through yards have

Run by night, trampled shoots 

And buds they blight, fallen, broken

Show colors still, and side by side

Their strength we see and pride.

You put them in a vase, cut glass,

On tables so they’ll live that way 

Who knows how long 'til crimson drops

Their colors spoiled will betray.

Now in thought we bow our heads 

For blooming innocence cut violently

And how I suffer the way you look

Hearing cries at what we see 

How nature blessed bled helplessly 

As blue and yellow defend and fight 

In desperate throes against their fate 

From those who charge so heedlessly

Leave in ruins those blooms once free

Planted not so very long ago. 

Oh, we say. 

Oh!

Oh!

I prefer evocation 

To the real

Not midday light 

Across the field

But a setting sun

The shadows cast

What’s not there

But what’s implied

The hidden face

You cannot see

The farmer’s wife 

Alone inside

Evening light

Atop the trees 

Gilding the moment

A dying sun, I 

Prefer the darkness

When it comes

Beneath what’s left

Time has spun

Prefer day’s end 

To what is done

Not what happened,

But the silence after

The questions asked

Grief alone will answer.

I was an antelope boy

At first felt spring

Charged with winds

And the sun's sprayed current

Running with hot feet

And animal suredness

Past a young girl

Flaunting my antelope grace.