Color

Brown Boy to Brown Girl

(Remembrance on a hill) (For Yolande)

“As surely as I hold your hand in mine,

As surely as your crinkled hair belies

The enamoured sun pretending that he dies

While still he loiters in its glossy shine,

As surely as I break the slender line

That spider linked us with, in no least wise

Am I uncertain that these alien skies

Do not our whole life measure and confine.

No less, once in a land of scarlet suns

And brooding winds, before the hurricane

Bore down upon us, long before this pain,

We found a place where quiet water runs;

I held your hand this way upon a hill,

And felt my heart forebear, my pulse grow still.”