It began in the Greek Isles.
Sunrise café.
The sky colored itself violet that day.
Violet, like the stripe in Joseph's coat.
Violet, like one of Picasso's overused palettes.
Fish line-danced in a jello green sea.
You set your backpack next to mine,
asked if you could buy me a cuppa,
then read me your poem about Froggie.
I sang you a Dylan song. Badly.
You applauded, anyway.
You were far too skinny then
and I was too lost in my sadness, but
we held hands and talked
while the sea whimpered and snakes
shed their skin in the nearly grass.

We met up again in Rome, then Paris.
In London, we rented a coldwater flat
and slept nude and shivering,
daring only a kiss, come midnight.
You married a black-eyed girl
two years later, you wrote me,
and I wed a roving sailor.

Somehow we seemed to know
that you coming inside of me
would carry us down some road
we weren't yet ready to take,
when we really needed to end up here.
This time. This now,
our hearts tinted green and violet,
our faces flush with remembrance.


Pris Campbell
©2007

From my chapbook, Hesitant Commitments,
published by Lummox Press.


Art: Birthday by Chagall
    


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