Through the Seasons by Kimberly Coverly

Through the Seasons by Kimberly Coverly

If October is like an inferno of amber,

Spitting cardinal and gold,

Covering the land with fallen leaves

And gourds of different shapes and sizes,

Then May is like rainbows,

Lemon, plum, and lime

Sprinkled in pools of turquoise

And swimming in sunlight.

Earlier today I was swallowed by a sea of green,

While floating on charcoal rubber and cement,

Not looking at the minute white stripes on my right,

Rather, focused on the forest unknown that lie around the bend.

My only direction, dictated by the double canaries,

Marks of my distance protruded from the moist ground,

But I did not let my pupils focus on the slate symbols,

They would only cloud my mind.

And this too would fog my venture,

A tone cross standing solitary,

Shadowed in sadness and remembrance.

But, the light, the light! It must be him!

Papa, guiding the way out of the abyss,

Into the brightness of new life.

Once in a dream I could have used his aid,

For I was drowning, lugs seizing for air.

Oddly, a stone creature was beside me,

Small pockets of oxygen escaping her gaping mouth.

Why was I being punished?

This object dead, yet still breathing.

She didn’t need air, but I did, and yet, I died.

II.

I never thought life could be colorful,

After all, didn’t it start in black and white?

But, after that dream I saw colors bursting forth,

The most prominent being red.

Piercing red, that fills the body with rage,

Soft red of a freshly picked rose shows lust,

And the kind of red found on bricks,

Encapsulating the mind when feeling jealous.

Believe me, what happene next was abismyl.

She gawked at me, façade at an angle,

Clearly stunned by my lack of clothing and hair.

Yet, stares are not unusual for me,

They will never know my past of cotton picking,

Thorns that stole my dignity.

The worst thing you ever said to me was

That I needed to get a life.

Life filled my bloodstream back then!

These days, I’m like a ragdoll,

Hanging limp, no life pulsing through my veins.

He has tried to carry my burden in his arms,

But tension is becoming too much, grasp loosening.

Surrounded by open space I wonder what it would be like,

To feel the wind surge past my limbs,

Hitting rock bottom, feeling the sensation of the atmosphere.

Listen, life is swirling around us at infinitely high speeds,

To make sense of it all we have to feel stability,

In objects and the people nearest us.

Once in October I said quick farewells,

To all of the rocks in my life and the world I once knew.

Ivory metal was becoming a blur as they drove away,

All senses seemed to melt together,

As salty water made a rainbow of the mess.

Lines were no longer drawn clearly,

Life transformed into a puddle.

But it is not October, it is May.

No longer swallowed by the darkness of the Fall,

A piercing inferno of warmth

Fills me with dignity and life.

I won’t ever drown in those puddles.