Today's poem is by Michael Goodfellow

Distance Was the Colour of Water
       

I learned early that distance was the colour of water:
the yellow-grey-green of something fallen

to the side of a trail—birch,
bent poplar in the canopy's far dark,
the light of lying face down.

The light of a winter day ending.

Dry grass light, brook light, alder. Underwater,
distance made a stony sky.

You could see it in others:
the way a bottle caught the lawn's green,

an old mirror, its silver peeled off,

slush of a half frozen pond,
light sharded and bubbled with sedge.
Threaded, the flinty grey of a needle's eye.

The way you remember a dream when falling asleep,

twice forgotten, sun warped.
How there was a moment in burying something

that meant lifting it up.
Underwater, the land looked like part of the sky.

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Copyright © 2023 Michael Goodfellow All rights reserved
from Riddle Fence
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission