A band of colors
jazz the day—
copper, bronze
and butterscotch,
vermilion, carmine,
bittersweet,
descants of fluted golds
and mandarin modulations,
plum saxophones
and bongo reds
as if
our lives depended on it,
as if we needed to hear it,
the crimson defiance
and tangerine trumpeting—
I am a tree. I have no reason to fear that other blaze.
Pamela Ahlen is program coordinator for Bookstock Literary Festival held each summer in Woodstock, Vermont. She organizes literary events for Osher (Lifelong Education at Dartmouth) and compiled and edited Osher’s Anthology of Poets and Writers: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years at Dartmouth. Pam received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the author of the chapbook Gather Every Little Thing (Finishing Line Press).
Featured image by Derek Wright
