February

A chimney, breathing a little smoke. The sun, I can't see making a bit of pink I can't quite see in the blue. The pink of five tulips at five p.m. on the day before March first. The green of the tulip stems and leaves like something I can't remember, finding a jack-in-the-pulpit a long time ago and far away. Why it was December then and the sun was on the sea by the temples we'd gone to see. One green wave moved in the violet sea like the UN Building on big evenings, green and wet while the sky turns violet. A few almond trees had a few flowers, like a few snowflakes out of the blue looking pink in the light. A gray hush in which the boxy trucks roll up Second Avenue into the sky. They're just going over the hill. The green leaves of the tulips on my desk like grass light on flesh, and a green-copper steeple and streaks of cloud beginning to glow. I can't get over how it all works in together like a woman who just came to her window and stands there filling it jogging her baby in her arms. She's so far off. Is it the light that makes the baby pink? I can see the little fists and the rocking-horse motion of her breasts. It's getting grayer and gold and chilly. Two dog-size lions face each other at the corners of a roof. It's the yellow dust inside the tulips. It's the shape of a tulip. It's the water in the drinking glass the tulips are in. It's a day like any other.