My painty fingers ask

My painty fingers ask: what is the name of that color? The one that instigates this shirt? Is it a green, a light green, a sea foam, a blue-green plus white, whiter? A kind of wish?

And with this shirt I thee recall. Because I wore it on our streetcar ride. I beg to remember that you must have looked around for that color as you (protective) looked for where I was following.

Now it is washed and hanging in the sun, later because the visit is gone, the sea of it, the ether of it, the summer in a Nordic country.

(I check the vodka level in the glass. I wasn’t sure I wanted to travel this far with my self this evening.)

The color calms but induces flutter. The shirt had my body in it as you looked upon.

(How long does it take for vodka to evaporate? A drunk worries how much is lost. I’m so embarrassed. The fern leans out over the walkway.)

In the square foot of ground immediately before me now, in the present, scene of my remembering, is a beginning oak tree, cilantro, alyssum, clover, oregano, and teeny white flowers attached to what I thought were weeds. So happy about my gardening philosophy which is to notice when the taskmaster-weed-killer shouts in my head and then I go lay down. Many a plant has been saved. I bend down to them and look. They all arrive by disparate but precise stems. I’ve never seen them before and they are right in front of me.

I am so glad of paintings today which are the color of the shirt. How could you possibly think that was not lovely for all time? How could you recede?

I’ve butterflies in my yard, a kind of paint. Love is, in the end, an attention, math attention, language attention, love attention. Please come talk to me.