AQUA BLUE

The river was green, not blue.
I too was green, a child,
in the green of summertime,
wading into the limpid element,
seeing clear to the sand,
bare feet nudging empty oyster shells.

I'm blue now, dreaming of you, gazing up
at the towering aquarium tank,
sea nettles undulating through time--
O Death where is thy sting?
Where are thy tentacles?

I am not a child anymore.
I may not be born anymore.
I may go on drifting like you, like you,
feeding on nothing but empty blue.

Where is that summer, those sea nettle stings,
the welts on my legs, my tears and whimpers?
Where is that school book's photograph,
that Man O'War devouring me
like time, old age, decay?

I'm harmless now, no more women adore me,
nor I them; I adore what they are not,
they adore what they have dreamed.
Soon I won't see them, they won't see me.

AQUA BLUE

I'll blur into blue, like a watercolor cloud,
unmanifested, unvanishing,
on a horizon where earth and sky,
no longer bound in a dictionary,
drift like a midsummer's dream
, without you, without me.