Black Light
I live in purple twilight
As days hang cobalt blue
Outside my window at
Midday
I watch crows fly slow
Under thick clouds looking
Hard and rugged over the
Expansive
Parking lot that stretches like
A fallow field and is a landscape
Colorless and drained of
Light
That has migrated to a temperate
Climate where birds-of-paradise bloom
And pines, junipers and palms
Grow
Together against a horizon of hills
Rising green into the sky and washed
In summer light that has left me
Alone
In winter dreams I see the barn red
Caissons of the Golden Gate bridge
Over wind textured waters without
Crows
Red Wheelbarrow
I didn't notice the sunrise orange
Boiling over the horizon from my
Office window
Or a crow flying black against the
Winter sky the tips of its wings
Foiling upward
I live in a morning without poetry
Where the modular furniture is
January gray
And metaphors lose their way in
Aisles narrow maze and images
Left forgotten
Like cold coffee in office pots
And similes yellow wilt like
Tropical plants
In the reception lobby waiting at
The elevators I have forgotten a
Red wheelbarrow
Heaven's Snow
Snow like a marble altar
Covered with sacred linen
Set against
The photographic negative
Of gray transparency skies and
The dark
Lacework of winter trees
Still and unmoving in a
Landscape where
The only movement is the grainy
Drifting of small snowflakes
That float
In freefall like grace from God
That falls lightly from heaven
More spirit
Than substance into the cold
Uncaring of a Sunday afternoon
In January
Photograph
There is a black and white photograph
Of the house I grew up in hanging on
The wall
Of my living room lit by a lamp on
The end table that shines a summer light
That seems
To glisten on the windows that I
So desperately search for face or figure
But finding
Them all dark and the front porch
Swing empty my eyes rise to
Gables adding
Geometry to a sky in a time there
Was no order only the willy nilly
Reaching and
Retraction of feelings as distant as the
Elms on Holcomb Street faint in the
Photo's background
Yellow
Goldfinch
Summer sunrise on its wings
Pauses rhythmic and musical
Hot buttered flight to perch
A moment on the pine tree’s
Finial
© 1997 by Doug Tanoury, all rights reserved
Doug Tanoury grew up in Detroit and still lives in the area with his wife and three children. His work has appeared online at Spectrum Press, The Bridge, Sour Grapes, Realpoetik, Block Lines, Anthem, Seasons, Untitled and Recursive Angel. Doug also posts his own web site, along with several other poets, at Athens Avenue Poetry Circle.
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