top of page
The Orange Parasol

Furled warmth,

forgotten perhaps

by fickle hands,

it clings to railing

where grey walls meet.

Pure flutter of color,

it is the rain’s festoon

at the end of season,

a wave for April,

a girl’s heartbeat

in the garden among

zinnia and mirasol,

divertissement

of butterfly. The mind,

expansive, impure,

unfurls its web

of shade, imagines

the ruffles of a can-can

courtesan, the tragic

trance of a Cio-Cio San,

flaps its arms, spins

like a dying swan,

as it holds on to some

notion of permanence

in the vertigo of stairs,

the sheer drop

of parapet to the empty

pavement below,

under the blurred

diagonal between

light and shadow.

Thus it stuns us

totally as it furls

the mind back into

its folds of brightness

intensely superfluous

in the sun.

 

​

March 27, 2012

​

​

​

bottom of page