Landscape painting

You walked into a blue world

Where sky is cerulean, sea admiral

And azure, undersides of trees

Bruised indigo. A butter sun, unseen,

Glints on whitewashed walls, paths

And feathered foam. Outside the margin

I squint.

 

You wander down titanium paths,

Find a plum-purple olive grove

And meet a pale girl. Owl-eyed,

An ochre girl watches you behind

Trellised windows. Someday

A fisherman will drop her into cobalt;

Scarlet blossoms bloom on leafless trees.

For lives are savage here, pulsing through me

Marrow-deep.

 

I will enter your world, find you

In olive groves, on sable sands

And fall in love. What I offer

Is not azure, scarlet,

Nor bleached blinding white.

I stand here, as always,

on the margins,

Missing a cerulean life

I never had.