Colors on Hickory Nut Mountain

Your hair, a shade lighter than
the last year's leaves you sat on,
shone like copper when you turned
your head to tell me color
existed only in the eye
(white sailboats on
a dark blue lake
through the woods
there pressing spring),
and what a thing I thought it was
that light had traveled all that way
on such an urgent flight
to find you on the mountain
and paint you black and white.


(The Sentinel-Record, August 17, 1985)