Red Dress

When I see you in your red dress
I want to become darkness so that
you are a flame as you walk by
and I whisper evening birds
into your hair.

My eyes are blue now that you call
me an ocean. How gray they become
as dawn cuts in over eastern mountains.
Crows are my syllables repeating
until whole sentences
form a new year.

You move in air on delicate colors.
Sunset redefines your shapes.
You set into my eyes like music
and all the colors speak luscious
sentences. How green the world is
now that you have said it.


Last Water First Silence

Because you are not time
the word you stops at the edge
of the sea in the curl of green
breakers.

Because you are shadows
of night wind searching for
escape holes in the dark,
you are green under white
fingers of the moon.

Because you are not space,
the centuries do not hold you
even with wars and delicious
offers of death.

Because you are not light
you bring the sun's buckets
of white skulls and let them
burn out among the eons.

Because you are love
no voice can say your
first name and when
I call you by your eyes

you see desert spaces
move mauve shadows of
deer to the last water and
the first silence.


Conquests

Dawn rises on your ankles.
We walk into it and disappear for days.
In the first kiss under great trees
we put a bright city on the hills.

Men returning from conquest
see how our light breeds angels.
Wings swift with light flash green
over glass buildings.

Having released daylight
we are free now--our freedom
dissolves stones and bones of war.
We have revised our view of life
to include our own infinity.



Russell Salamon
Excerpts from Woodsmoke and Green Tea
deep cleveland press 2006