BB Grey–musings

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“The Color of Rest on Sunday”
…after Frost

It’s Sunday, and the day waits at my window,
A silent usher in woolen light.
The world, hushed at the seams, has started,
But I have not. I sit, not ready yet.

Two birds,
One, blue with a black-stitched back,
The other, cinnamon-flecked and frosted,
Chatter in three-four time, a waltz on the limb.
Their perch nods with every chirped crescendo,
Recoils with the hush between.
Then off they dart—new homes, new tables set,
Leaving branches to sway like memory.

Clouds drift, glacial in pace,
Unbothered by our clocks and calendars.
They puff into creatures,
A bunny, a dog, the Pillsbury Dough Boy,
Or me, last year, before that angry summer.
Their shadows spill across the lawn,
Cooling green in streaks of moving hush.

Behind the glass, I sit, veiled,
The linen curtain a faded khaki,
Like a sack, or perhaps a bridal gown:
“Do I?”
Or am I simply cut in two,
One part revealed, the other resigned.

The lawn is shorn,
A new cut, stripes like a chessboard.
The pieces? A squirrel, the neighbor’s dog,
Children atop a white-laced doily,
Like summers past in the park,
Crinkled with light and laughter.

Easy, like Sunday morning,
The rustle of newsprint,
Ink-smudged fingers,
Coffee—black, bitter, and true.

The gray in my beard,
The white in my hair,
The black in my eyes,
All tell the documentary of me.

Nature prints in color,
But I,
I have become a palette of greys.
You can pull gray from color,
But never color from gray.

Still,
Rainbows sing in black’s shadow,
Pop against white’s hush.
Gray is backdrop,
Canvas,
Stage left.

And so I write and paint
This Sunday,
Easy in its rest,
Promised like a myth,
A unicorn.
Even He, on the seventh,
Laid down the tools,
Creation
Meant also for adoration.

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