close as Venice

and if shores wash orange with sea change
and flamingos wade a pink foamed beach
and meridians slip north and south…where
ice islands…harmless…circle earth cool clear
cubes of iridescence

and people sing to each other close like Venice
and hand-write words to paper…slips pinned
to color coded windows…walls and doors shaded
for degrees of dark despair…and lightened for
the bloom of promises…and hope

we shall become a silent movie stuff of need
to tell and touch with bonds direct..profound and
strange as emerald studded starfish on the sands
and oysters hatching diamonds in our hands

 

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Kolmon Moser
Draft for a Metal Relief, 1904