Winter solitude

Winter solitude--

in a world of one color

the sound of wind.

Matsuo Basho: Winter solitude

Red was your colour

Red was your colour.

If not red, then white. But red

Was what you wrapped around you.

Blood red.

And outside the window

Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail

As the skin on blood.

Ted Hughes: Red (fragment)

Reflections of possibility

There's a piece on the chair

A piece in the hall

A nice piece of me

Stuck to the wall

Divide and conquer

The jigsaw in you

Has left me asunder

All over the room

There's a piece by the clock

Clinging awkwardly to time

There's a piece at the piano

Clinging stubbornly to rhyme

There's a fun piece of me 

In a crack in the floor

An innocent piece

Who walked out the door

Call me a doctor

Or a structural engineer

Draft me a past and a future

That consert to adhere

Give me a pill that makes cohesion

A pharmalogical thing

Bring me the tape and the twine

The blueprint design

To fit the scraps and the threads

To the feet and the legs

There's a piece that was pretty

For a moment or two

But my mouth and my lips

Are somehow askew

A piece of a hero is

Behind the TV

The piece with the glue

Is looking for pieces of me

There's a piece in Detroit

A piece in LA

New York is a critic

She's funny that way

There's a piece prone to panic

A big piece is blue

All the pieces agree

The best piece went with you

In fragments and tatters, scattered

All over the road

Each piece has the other

But no pieces is a whole

Little maps in their pockets,

Reflections of possibility

The pieces pick themselves up

Dust themselves off

And start all over

Again

Patricia Barber: Pieces