Blue Onions

If you start with a parapet
You get nowhere
An ornate weather vane
Is a finishing touch
Your vision needs city plumbing
Land lines
Masonry
And that is the difference between construction and poetry

If I describe the snow to you
So far away
And I do it properly
You might need to come here
To see it for yourself someday
If I've done it right
You have pictures in your head
Of every fence, branch, and telephone wire

Easy enough to paint
From memory
With cobalt oxide
On smooth porcelain
Be it a horse drawn carriage
Tromping through
Or a small finch
Lost among it
These things that make me call you
Hundreds of years too late
From Iraq
Or China
Or even Meissen
To say
Keep it simple
There is so much you can do
With one color
Against another

With light and shadow
You can know the world
And that is the difference between a place to put things and a place
called house
It also reads as poetry would
If you start with the sky
And build things down
From there
--
2.16.10