Under pressure

That summer evening
the sky was pink and raw
and your eyes were streaked in red.

We could feel the cool air
rush between us,
in day and under night.

There were monsoons churning just miles away,
we could feel these winds too.

Sounds became amplified
in dusk and static cling.
You could hear quite clearly this ring,
some say halo
spreading above.

Colors holding onto some blended harmony,
a lilac or plum, some and none.

When we look up, you say away
our trajectory changes its synchronicity,
which was never the same as settling.

We knew the heat wave would break
as much as the cold spell would snap
the last straw, but we watched the change
wash over us.

We know, but forget constantly.

At times like these,
warm rain reminds us
endurance and presence
are more than enough.


Painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1836) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Grape and Plum: A Raisin to Prune

Something says
Mature
about a grape
or a plum
per se
symbolically
a tinge of empyrean
or is it in the color?

Have you
perchance
tasted a sour one?

You know you cannot tell
by the purple shell-
when even the peachiest flesh
bites back, bitterly.

Grape and plum wind
up to a higher air, elevated
and astutely erudite.

Ever-enduring and life-sustaining
fruits and stones, vines and arbors
plucked and dried to dehydration
where sugar is preserved
inside the lines.

Out from the water
which now makes our skin
resemble these: raisins or prunes,
making wine or meijiu
with the aide of lemons.

A tangled path,
the wrath of a wife
whose plum mad
one of her perfect speci-
mens-
was cooly
stolen from the fridge.

Maturely,
with sticky June juice
on her chin, she wins-
she smiles at the sweet one
she got,
knowing these
are life lessons
in taste.



Image of painting by Anne Vallayer-Coster, c. 1778 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.