Carolyn on the First Real Day of Spring
Colors of a waking city flash, reflect
and turn blind eyes away. “I am
that double rainbow,” she tells me,
“fading and short-lived, soon forgotten.”
“Like an apple blossom, butterflies,
the pink sky on the horizon after
the sun has gone to earth.” Beautiful,
I tell her. All pointless, she replies.
She’s a promise of peace, a sailor’s delight,
hurricane-maker a continent away
as she bats her tiny iridescent wings.
She’s the smell of rain when the dust is thickest
where the lawn used to be.
She’s the garlic on my bread
and she knows it.
“What do you think of carnivores?”
she asks me, petals in her hair
and fingers dimpled deep
into her cheeks. “I like rabbits,”
she says, before I can reply,
“but not that much, I think.”
