Colors of The Azaleas

When I bring in the azaleas
what's behind me begins to fade.
The supple purple of a petal
is now my color.

I could, of course, look past
the azaleas and watch
the dust in the sun ray;
Or write a memoir for the flower
once dropped next to my feet
on a long journey when I had
neither a home nor a vase.
I folded it between the pages of uncertainty
and roads that led to nowhere,
but I ended up everywhere
in unpredictatble colors.

I picked no color, indeed
was picked by the colors
of forever-changing seasons.
I waited one season
in one country,
and another season
in another harbor.

No harbor is a harbor,
No home is a home
permanent, except our eyes
forever searching for a color
until the rain erases one color
and begins another.

My hands are full of colors
mingled with lips and hair
that I grip and then splatter
on a scroll of rice paper
brought from a remote island
now discolored in the mist
of unbridgeable oceans.

I tried to cross the oceans
on a plane,
or on the blueness of an aerogram,
more often, on a dry leaf or a petal
in a book of poems lingering
with rootless colors.

My heart has been everywhere
like the azaleas
with no identify, no nationality,
living one color in a moment
in the hands of admiration
and another moment under the feet.

Hold me,
Hold me for a moment
for holding the color
of azaleas.
posted by Stephanie Chin at 6:37 AM 1 comments