P.J. Nights
blue notes
the blues in our lives are both the deepest and most transparent I once got an F in art for trying to watercolor the three-dimensional blue of twilight for attempting a rainbow around the moon I might die happy eating fried eggs on the porch under the bluest sky this spring—coffee tastes better watching the fiddleheads sprout I put on a silk shirt because it caresses me as no other there were crabs in the trap I stuck my finger into for the pinch, unpaid lifesavers in my pockets that I sucked and spit in the gutter wings are shaken to the balcony look, look into double mirrors for layers overthrown the silver chains that lock necks and purple bougainvillea I wait under trumpets of jewelweed and reggae remember me chalk-painted on the road to your house it’s four little minutes past midnight, another day the blues in our lives are almost transparent
the rain writes black
between the rushing crescendo
& decrescendo
of wind, I hear birds on boughs calling
mama mama
mama !
my own hallucinations resonate
with the day’s responsibilities, not hearing
the birds’ busy season –- boys finding girls, girls
filling the nest before summer’s heat
collapses them
into fixed geo
metric pat-
terns
the roar is stronger now, calling pamela
pam
pam PAM
triggering a reflex dance
below a sky turned gray
over saffron
before birds swallowed the essence of my belly
-- when I still opened out to a fan’s breeze --
before swirls of thick shade
meant an opening not an end,
the wise toad made a green pavement
of round water bubbles, my steady breath
caught above reed-pipes
in captions more solid than the smooth
river stones beneath my feet
now as movement turns footing to sand
& bathes my body in the hoots
of secluded owls,
I am inflated again by prehistoric winds,
laden lightly with the womb of the moon
©2005 by P.J. Nights
