‘Colors’ and other poems by Phillip Knight Scott
By: Phillip Knight Scott
colors
I love you as
the night
hangs gently from your
brow, playing towards
a twinkle,
determined to
turn your lips (
revealing the bliss
meant for us)
gentle red.
I love you as
the sea laps salty
on the sand,
receding
waters smoothly
cascading
across the
vast beautiful coastline
before ebbing
into blue.
I love you as
a tree stretches for
the sun for
it knows nothing else
energized by the effort
before winter, after,
half of it will return
in bloom, better (for
the trouble),
into green.
###
another freckle
I counted her freckles like rings
in a tree trunk, soft kissed by the sun,
and on particularly warm summer nights
I lose the number, finding myself instead
tracing her face, hinting at red,
burning as another day
fades gentle, another mark of beauty.
###
Round
The moon goes round the earth, tilted
but not for me. Storms come in
one cloud
at a time as people
float in and out of my life, flotsam passing
out of sight.
Living in the nots we are but leaves
falling aimlessly,
so leave the dirt
behind as the earth tilts towards
another winter, another spring
out of nowhere.
We are all but visitors, sojourning
through where we think
we ought to reside
sometimes thinking forward, often
looking backward.
Or perhaps we are visions, soldiering
as we can, knowing
the world ends
when we’re dead and yet
clinging to the gift of possible.
Sometimes there is no deeper meaning and
a rose is just a flower.
So we petal through
wondering what it all matters,
even if we are just matter.
###
At dusk (tangerine orange)
As blues turn a tangerine orange,
dusk surrounds each of us with the promise
of another day, soon to peak through
the leaves of this old tree, reaching,
straining, but never able to feel blue.
How small is the tree, as the sun radiates,
warmth engulfing everything with the hope
that the vastness of existence pours through
everything with a purpose that we, reaching,
straining, are never able to understand?