Colors

The way you wore white,

the way it sheathed and wrinkled

your hips and torso.

White, still never the same.

Black Crowes blasted

while we soaked in the Jacuzzi

installed by a dairy farmer

with a broken body.

Candles flickering,

bubble bath bubbling.

I should have proposed,

hired a Black Crowes cover band to play at our wedding.

You clad (barely) in a purple top

on a hot summer’s evening

as we strolled the Oregon City promenade,

past the famous green Elevator.

The Willamette River ran slack and gray below

while Oregon’s last paper mill shot steam into a blue sky,

And the purple top again,

on Nestucca Spit,

when you flashed the pilot of the red biplane

spying on us splayed in the yellow spears of dune grass.

He gave you the thumbs up

and somehow managed to land.