If you listen

How your soul might slip away, by Mariacristina

You can hear colors hissing if you listen,
a whirlpool of turquoise, just listen.

Poppies and daisies rustle in the pasture–
on a mountaintop you hover, and listen.

Through half-lidded eyes you scan distant pines
for hawks or crows, listening

for squawks. You spy
their dark forms gliding on currents, listen–

wing flaps, muffled flutters. You spiral out
from whispering branches, and listen

to far away swishing of tall grass,
and you drift on clouds, listening

for a last goodbye. Your lover stands
in the center of a field. Remember how you listened

the whishing of his breath, your ear on his chest?
When he softly lows, you listen,

and hear a calf,
who tilts a tufted ear as if to listen

to your feathers riffling in the wind.
It’s a young bull, still, hushed, listening

to shadows whistling among the pines.



This poem is a variation on a ghazal for readwritepoem, thematically based on the painting entitled Calf by Rick Mobbs, author of Mine Enemy Grows Older