She is plainer than her mate whose vivid red inspires the watcher to gather praise into one line of perception.
Isn’t it often like that? Too easy to play on all that red, to get at marrow by breaking bone, tear aside the clouds blooming at sunset and exclaim at the first splash of blood.
So easy to be like that, even when what breaks often is only deepest felt at the breaking: patience, silence, friendship a reddening unseen poured slowly through us.
Here again, in the branches of the gold tipped sycamore, she is, still, her mousy self, herself a nest, a citadel, while her mate’s platitudes plume against spring snow.
Here again, in the midst of his crimson his sing-songing
blazes contained in her mark their way as they surface, each as fierce as any red that has ever broken us, awakening to the world awakening to this at once unforgiving whirl this whirl of entanglements.
