Primary colors are children’s colors:
red, yellow, blue--
an incomplete box of crayons.

Colors to make your eyes hurt
to paint the deep throats of flowers
to strut in male dances of creation.

Primary colors:
Brilliant
Pure
Strong ...

Colors to banish the gray
of decisions too hard to make
of debts too long forgotten

A Time of Growing

It was a time of growing:
when shoots spill out
of the mesh you have set round them,

when the caring gardener
picks the mealy bug
and chases the snail,

when stem and leaf
suck sunlight
and the evening’s cool;

it was a time of growing, of needing ...
a time that could not support
forgiving.

A Father's Love

I never knew my father;
he spent his life
and death
in prison
for crimes a child
could not understand.

Before he died,
he wrote me one letter,
not of remorse nor sorrow,
but to affirm
that long ago
he had loved to creation.

Poetry Magazine