Blue hangs like a limp flag above him

Stirred only by half-a-breeze

Always waiting for tomorrow

 

Light falling through these trees

As if through ten green bottles

Hanging on for the fall

 

In a crush of commuting greys she wore bright orange

Less to draw attention to herself, more in blazing protest

Against complicity, against the curse of ordinary compliance

 

Yellow says hello

As the summer strips the grass to straw

And flowers forget their gazing upwards

 

Red bowl of the sun in a darkening sky

Curtaining so fast that I reach out

Grasping as to cup it, to keep it close

 

Pink flesh unfolds like a flower

This fragile child, as if fearing the late frost

Now wrapped up safe in mother

 

The night is purple, not-quite-dark

Wide open like the mouth of a whale

Or the space between stars

 

Black like before-life, like un-pregnancy

Like before the big bang roared outwards into us

Before love made anything possible

 

Grey like the day she came to say “The time has come for leaving”

The sun itself was choked by cloud

The very sea was weeping

 

Water falling down on these old rocks

Gilding them with liquid silver

This normal place, anointed

 

Age has turned your hair pure white

Like the soul that dances in you

You are cathedral and I, your evensong

 

Sunlight makes alchemy from mountains

Now gold in the evening mist

Far beyond the wealth of kings

 

Brown like the ground where we lay down

The earth is pillow-soft

And waiting