lullaby in violet & green

static on a tv set broadcasting
weather from Poland Springs, that Vermont
horizon purple above the neighbors’ big
oak & the pine fringed hills to the west

you reading aloud "The King of the Golden
River" at blue dusk in a bedroom with one
open dormer window curtain floating
on the scent of lilacs blooming like twilight

can you sleep? can the train whistle sing in
harmony with the whip-poor-will in the green
night in a summer that existed once
beside a river & the brown-grey riprap?

but time doesn’t move in summer’s direction—
though it does stop: at day’s end always so much
undone & where you are it’s snowing snowing
now because you have no winter blanket


Jack Hayes
© 2016