Bloodshot

Maybe it is a colour that we will remember like a taste of a childhood treat.
Blue sky. Deep, soft, endless, beautiful against the green of grass and trees.
Everywhere, above you like a giant velvet parasol, twirling white clouds like cotton balls.

I walk and see brown haze above, searing sunlight in midday as was the day about to end.
Shadows uncertain in a sky with bloodshot eyes, no dew, no wind but a hesitant smokey sigh
that drops the summer's leaves yellow and brittle on the water in the pool and the dusty, crunchy ground.

Where is the abundance of bees, birds, butterflies ?
The sky moans its silent thirst in blinding, murky light,
with our sun a disc of white heat losing its beat in time.

Like a hungover drunk dehydrated and worn out,
the sky's bloodshot eyes yearn for tears to clear the haze.
Blue for the sky. What a lovely colour it would be to paint some relief and beauty
past this wave of scorching heat that warns of earth's wrath .
There is a black dragon on its way, who prefers the sky red,
and who retches at the sight of blue.

When the sky was blue, it had a taste like spearmint leaves at dawn.



Trudi Ralston.