Rhapsody in Blue

Down by the river
                  white Gershwin gulls cavort
acrobatically against
                  a deliriously fresh blue
early December sky

In trios in duos
                  in shapely quartets
they soar before falling
                  weightlessly
through the empty air
                  From a black barge
moored upstream
                  a black cormorant
slips counterpoint
                  from its perch
glides slowly across
                  the flat unbroken surface
The stillness
                  the crisp silence peppered
with the small talk
                  of two pedestrians
animatedly ambling rubato
                  along the jetty

Down below
                  the rising tide shimmers
in the mid-morning light
                  an imperceptibly flowing stave
upon which other gulls
                  are noted
motionless as all else
                  moves around them
the melody of life
                  moving through life
as my consciousness
                  streams
now and then
                  intermingled memories
Here was love
                  here were her eyes
here was the cool
                  cheek to cheek
the death-dance of affections
                  body-clasping
the macabre cadenza of sighs
                  from her blemished lips

Here nature at rest
                  and at play
the limp flat note
                  of the container ship
bissecting the panorama
                  the emotional exuberance
of stolen time
                  and the stolen signatures
of creation
                  all that is major and minor
here for the taking
                  in the harmonic progression
of my day — blood-brimmed love
                  in the sapphire blue :
my momma should have told me
                  there’d be days like this

John Lyons