Once
Once
By Donna Pucciani
yellow meant sun,
the morning’s monacle of day,
the way dawn becomes noon
in the dahlia’s summer way,
the way a child’s face
greets the cosmic existence
of being, the opposition
to the inevitability of death.
And blue meant sky,
that canopy of clarity,
freedom from rain
or the wide dunes of snowfall
that mound terra firma with odd
hills. Blue is the sky
the day after blizzards. Blue
means Mondays, melancholy
drawn into a vortex of sad birds
and windows empty of all
but one’s own face, and yet,
the blue in a baby’s eyes,
if only temporary, blesses
the blue orb of earth
with its noncommittal turning.
Now sun and sky
color a flag hanging in ribbons
over televised rubble
and babies’ bloodless faces.
Our blue globe of world
stops for a moment,
wordless, trembling amid
the bombs. Blue with cold,
the fingers of mothers hold
their children close, in the last
yellow dress rescued from
a closet in a bedroom painted
lemon, in a house that once
had walls of powder blue.
Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, The Pedestal, Journal of Italian Translation, and other journals. Her latest book of poetry is EDGES.