Broken from a part of a Northern blue sky-

I will place the summer of watercolors
as the last time when I was truly safe.
As a child with my hand in Nana's
trusting to be taken, not led,
I walked to places where she would hum against me,
cradle me when I was tired,
and blend the world into bright, simple hues;
coral reefs and lizards,
salt in the air.
I picked branches from the ground,
and, as instructed, dipped them in ink jars,
scratched the paper,
and watched masts and warning signs of deep water
blow on the paper,
jagged and smeared by hand and dead wood, blotches of blue.

The color that followed was not brown for bark and green for leaves,
and that was why I learned.
Nana had purple forests lining sand-crabbed marshes,
and crimson running through the inlets of the sound,
vermillion sails on the coasts of Georgia.
I saw the life flourishing around me as I do now:
hued and spectred by the soft wash of paints.

Children color as they love,
with generosity and disregard for lines,
and that watercolored summer was marked
by soft rains on a pier which speckled the boats,
and by sand that was blue,
running from her hands across the tops of my feet,
gentle and wet and soft;

the color of her eternal eyes.






GLS
9.9.91