From the curtain rod it dips
low and rises again, as air-laced
as a playground swing brushing
branches and kicking down
showers of petals brighter even
than months ago.
They call this kind of floating
delicacy Georgette, the scarf an ornament
carried in folds
of rolled summer shirts, a gift
from Australia.
At first it draped like jewels
around my neck. Now it serves
a higher purpose, casting its nameless
coral-drunk flowers, its sapphire reef
across the threshold of autumn’s breach.
It jars the white blinds
into dimensionality, pulling them from wall,
carpet, ceiling, from the insistence
of a morning that hasn’t even bothered to bring the sun
along for reveille.
My eyes wish for nothing now. They fall on absence
and do not complain.
I know the danger.
Fortification is imperative.
After the scarf is hung soft
enough there, I position a lamp
bought just today, just for this
corner. Knock-off Tiffany,
it is too big and the wrong shape
but needful nonetheless:
pressed-leaf glass shade, the sweep
of flora, celadon and indigo twining
between amber-veined isinglass panes.
Who could wither in this glow
of meadow, monarch,
day?
Color is a collusion
between evolution and light
to help us survive
the winter.
I tie a purple ribbon around the cord to pull
the switch near and call
my eyes like the face of a flower
back
to lift,
to thirst.
Shannon E. Williams 