Once Again

Not yet March
and the bright pink trumpets
are playing again!

They’ve come to impress me
and even though they bend
and droop

I hear high pitched tones
from the Christmas cactus,
tooting and roaring

a goodbye
to winter.

Fabyan Japanese Gardens

To Be Changed

seek quiet
in a Japanese Garden

walk without sound
passing black pines

slender lavender blooms
on giant ribbed hostas

the dry stone creek bed
will rush with rain

pause at the pond
cross the moon bridge

dipping to the stone lantern’s
unmovable thick walls

arched openings for light
seeping through rice paper

at night
to change you

Moon Bridge and Lantern

Colors

When we think of colors, just as colors,
we think confusion for they overwhelm
in their array, bouncing off the back of the eye
in their clothing of hues. I wanted red,
but was told red is too something—
too vivid, too bright, running too much
like blood. So I turned to yellow, since
I admire tangy lemons, and even dirtied gold
of late sunflowers, droopy in their hangovers.

Mixing them with water, in varying degrees
of course, thins the primaries into new
shades, the middles, the pales, the pinks
and baby blue. Oh yes, blues, but not
that slow poignant music of lost love;
the midnights, the cornflowers, the jay,
and the bay at midday when the sun
tells the sky to be on the water.

And swirling them together with
a paintbrush is the most fun, inventing
purple, orange, rose, teal and muddy
brown, the color we carefully avoid,
that lowdown earthy color, which reminds
us of grimy work and life’s clutter—
the contempt, the unredeemable,
unplanned, muddled life, jealousy,
and all the colorless days.

Beard’s Birdhouse in the Woods

Watercolor © Marilyn Peretti

Pomegranates, watercolor by Marilyn Peretti