Picking Up Shiny Things

after redemption

It is, perhaps, a stretch to say they were my stock
in trade, but I thought that I knew colors. I saw them
fanned and tucked, spilled and shadowed, seeped from cracks
and spread so thin they swallowed light. I was certain
I saw them and saw them true. I picked up feathers
and locusts’ husks, kept slipper shells in milky jars.
I spun the sky on a fingertip and gathered stars
that fell like drops of fire. My windows stood
uncurtained day and night. Darkness bloomed
in liquid hues. Mornings sprung like jungle cats
from the edges of the veldt. But I did not know colors

until I was deprived, driven deep into myself
where light is not allowed. Furled as a fiddlehead
and buried deep in silence, I was imprisoned. In the drawing
back before the wave strikes the shore, I forgot the amber
of my daughter’s eyes. When they pulled me
from the rim I gasped not air, but goldenrod,
azure and plum. And I knew colors
were not mine to own, but to drink and drink
like fresh, cold water from a endless well.
Now all the blues of heaven spill from above
and I taste, in this moment, a palette of possibilities.