Color of Salvage

                              Subtle are the gods

                              who bring new worlds
                              and point out the paths
                              that lead to darkest 
                              waters.

                              A soul feud comes from
                              unseen clamoring birds

                              who promise to build on the
                              rusty wet streaks and dripping
                              blue wings of the overhead
                              sky. Slow gray-white clouds
                              slip silently past with
                              no apparent reason.

                              We maneuver our inner pains

                              down soaked and crooked hillsides
                              where dotted weeds grow.
                              We paint them into little swaths
                              of yellow hermit fingers
                              who live under the sun.

                              They chortle in the wind with

                              dark-blue dark-gray-headed birds;
                              they search the whole wet earth
                              in tight inner circles for eligible
                              ideas and sources of light
                              for any of the lost
                              to be found.

                              We create new green stems 

                              with small bristles to release
                              flying spores and ocher tension,
                              and we stumble without intent
                              into a small clearing filled
                              with half-expected randomness.
                              We sit still, waiting, impatient
                              for the correct amount of color
                              and time to balance our equations.

                              Faith on blue will not last long.

                              Already we are dissolving into rain.
                              Migrating birds take flight.
                              Umber tree monks rise up to contemplate
                              and gather us into their solitude to ponder
                              the value of these woodland drippings—
                              the colors, the hues, the solitary
                              white birch who leans deeply
                              against the dark contrast of the river
                              searching for a place to stand.