Linnet Phoenix

 

Writing the Sunrise

violet, you had once said,
was the colour of the sun
in the most beautiful sunset
you ever yet witnessed,
overlooking a beach
thousands of miles past

this morning, as I left you
above fields of powder-milk mist,
the sun was blood orange
in a violet mixing-bowl sky,
in an ocean trench of purples
where the clouds held secrets
in mauve shadows of their eyes,
& it was painfully in the now

I didn’t stop to try to photograph
the blush of the clouds’ undersides,
or the pastel smudges of pink
that reminded me of you
drawing fly algaric in a pre-dawn
moment of your inspiration

I remembered, in the witching hour,
wanting to part the ghosts of cloud,
to rearrange those seven sisters
with my cool fingertips raised up
as I prepared to crumble constellations,
&, as you smiled in the dark,
I could have sworn I tasted ultraviolet