Gray

Spanish moss, its' choaking shrugs.

BIC's various granite contributions.

Chair-back gray, darker in the curve of crests.

My mothers thining strands,

drained of pigment. Her graying eyes,

weak from the neon chemicals that must be doing

something good. Something gray.

The gray coat drowning childhood bedroom walls with innocence.

Momma painted those, too.

Gray flats on my feet that "bing" as I click my heels in the

gray rain.

Gray light hits the beams that hoist that sail-boat molden bridge,

you know the one.

Gray with freshness; its' roaring strength.

Gray of cracking hands in winter, the tarnished gray that rims my finger

with palace dreaming.

My gray contentment.

The first gray coat of vine charcoal on a blank page;

never black enough.

Gray flakes of clay off his

brown-whale belly.

Eight months removed and still stuck to my shoes.

Gray of haze, blanketing my front porch with the stinch

of an aging man's cubans.

The Minnesota moon; probably still no bigger around than my thumb.

Specs in white knit fabrics, flecs of metal, the pain I never felt.