12.07.2015

Primary colors


LIFE-SAVERS

A warm December, Pearl Harbor Day.
Pale & luminous radiance
suffuses the primary colors
of the workmen’s big machinery

in the river (below Franklin Bridge).
Dazzling maternal uncle
Jim’s birthday – a Ravlin
clĂ© to the mystery.  Mrs. Elledge

added those little busts of Bach,
Mozart, & Beethoven
to my piano-lesson
collection (when I finished each book);

I loved her.  Jim waltzed Agnes,
the Viennese musician’s
daughter, around Lincoln
Center – while his own jeune fille was

in the shrouds of late-adolescent
angst, despair.  O
Juliet... swallowed at last
by Frisco Bay (agenbite

of inwit, James).  The pearl in the harbor
was a vivid soul, before
that fall; maybe somewhere
the wind still ruffles her black hair.

The soul, like a robin redbreast, wavers
high on its dogwood branch
over each day’s routine
avalanche.  Hunts for life-savers.

12.7.15

Franklin Ave. Bridge

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