ManicDDaily

"Red Roofs" Marc Chagal

Oh, the Red Roofs

When young, the roofs I longed for
weren’t crimson but
terracotta; they clustered beneath 
Florentine skies whose Giotto blue was propped by crusty bread
and the dusky wine that poured from pitchers 
sprigged with painted poppy. 

So much better, I thought back then, than the darker shingles
of triangulated humdrum further North, those shelters of bricked-up
dreams that held at best (I thought)
the wafting steam of milky tea.

In my midlife, I sought a specific deep red roof most often seen
from snow, a house whose windows of yellow light
beckoned like lanterns across sky sea,
where too the wafting steam of tea warmed fingers
like nothing else except perhaps (hours later) red wine and your
ribbed side.

Now older–tea drunk, wine swallowed, kisses exchanged–I think
of the deep red roofs of mouths, and beneath them
so many once-housed words– the rounded vowels of terracotta, the
shingles of hinged consonants, letters traced on snow-fogged glass,
prayers emboldened by Giotto blue–

Now, older, I think of the deep red roofs of mouths.