The Color of Our Eyes
On a restaurant deck by the river,
a lamp ignites with a stutter and I pluck a feather
from the railing to be tentative with, holding back
my answer, twirling it ‘tween my finger-tips ‘till
you fuse your gaze with mine
and say “I’m a good listener”.
An iridescent hint flickers from the feather
and the flash from your eyes floods my mind,
making a maelstrom reverie. I spin
into the quickly inking sky and see
blue. Blue like baby-boys’ bassinets
with Linus-like blankets snugly tucked.
That blue, like Dad’s denim work-shirt
fresh from the dryer but not folded.
Blue like Grandma’s upstairs carpet,
beside large and slightly-open windows,
like an inland sea in the solstice sun
floating, drowsing her furniture and
me upon its plush surface. Blue, yes,
like Traverse Bay in a camera lens or
a clear day framed in an open sun-roof. Blue
like lake and sky climbing into bed,
and eating juicy blue-berries off each other.
Your eyes unfurl sails of cerulean,
azure, perhaps, but not quite cobalt,
catching my masts, whisking my keel air-borne.
They are a blue painted in gentle, generous strokes
sweeping coolly over my face like Roy Hargrove playing
“Sitting On a Cloud”. Already I am wishing
upon stars like glittering sapphires.
I’m riding old Deneb like a swan’s tail
into dark blankets for Spica,
my new jewel in Virgo’s hand. I pray
I could borrow Orion’s boot, Rigel, rising high
in the night with a blue like yours. Yet
I’ve known a star like Sirius: dogged and
dragged low across the horizon with a glint of crimson
but still blue. It’s blue
like dingy fluorescents on a used party dress. It’s blue
like dried toothpaste on the sink that night. It’s blue
like her castaway Christmas bows in my closet. It’s blue
like polaroids of a beech trip, fading. It’s blue
like the chintzy upholstery on the for-sale love-seat
in the neighbors’ yard, by the burned ironing board.
Perhaps it’s darker, like the waning moon’s indigo beard.
Close your eyes and grasp my hand because I am afraid
of a blue like evening’s tint upon the snow
around a trail of footprints, leaving.
