Gilda’s Window
(For Laura Nyro)
There are no missiles here,
only mint leaves pungent between
fingers, each tip a catnip cosmos
for a small lavender nap.
Next to that
abundant grape leaves come,
an arbor of such vines
just waiting for succulent stuffing
and delicious mouths.
.
Where is the glass?
No panes seal this diorama of golden lamps.
Inside the shades are all made of pressed flowers
or are Japanese spheres promising that
the global is safe.
.
You could make a harbor here
and set yourself lotus floating.
You can leave the wooden shutters open
and admire their layers of peeling paint:
Viridian, opal, the world
a pearl and Gilda the pictured girl,
while from windows further down,
rising up,
is her daughter’s piano keys,
.
the chords of pure spirit.
which resonate.
.
Chagall & The Sky
Heaven is blue, blue
as a plastic coffee mug.
Other colors empty in, get
brush swirled. Beyond this
there’s nothing except an apex
where songs fade.
The radio is comrade.
.
Each night I make a point
of stacking myself up,
a heap of canvas reaching forth.
It takes great exertion.
Flesh, faces and voices flake
off at a pitch higher than the whistle
for a dog. Memory, that intractable
event, is pried at like a wax blotch
that a candle once was.
.
I’m simply another medium, receptive
as a screen where the morning’s mist is
milk & honey, an elixir of dew, the usual
bird racket, an ascension from lips,
eyes open on the distance.
.
Floating above, further always,
is a sea of deep cobalt.
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