Variation in Green

by Claudia K. Grinnell

Green is the color of a radio light,

spreading across his face.

It warms his arms,

arms too short to pull himself

closer to the ground, to this hand,

leading home.

That November, the foam

on the waves drifted into

the sky like snow and the

noon sun took the burn from

his face: just as hands

move across the room

of time, he walked across

the beach, watching (watch!)

seagulls until fog

blended all colors.

He remembers the church

was dark. A fellow

supplicant crouched in

a pew, illuminated by blood

red light. Christmas, proclaimed

in glittering streets,

was close. He wished for

something (please dear god please)

to burst his soul into

ascending birds. He strained

to hear the angel

whisper into the abyss.

Horizontal: such was the

evening. Houses fading into

stillness where nothing remained

but clouds moving from window

to window, and his eves turned

to the memory of his eyes.

At the city cemetery he brushed

against birches and dahlias,

and read the names he knew

and the ones he didn't know

anymore and stared into white

blind eyes of the angel,

felt the hard skin of eternity.

The radio hums static now

and a steady green: grass

after the rain, without

the memory of a quick

encounter between thighs,

without the careful exhalation of ashes.