junkyard -- week 6

1) Great-grandfather Roosevelt, half-Indian, half my own father,
with a dog named Blue—a sharpe’ with an old brown collar—
you and I built this back porch and garden, Big boys and Heirlooms
the size of fists, habaneros and jalapenos you’d eat by the handful.
(In the summer your nose would sweat.) Holly baby, you’d say,
when I cried, or when my sister and brother wouldn’t let me
hold their hamster Peanut. Holly baby, you’d say, when I held
him too tight in my fists, let him go. I have had to let you go,
Roosevelt, so much so this could as easily be India, all
women’s rights and cardamom and coriander,
the crowded markets full of saris made of silks—
yellow, hot pink, orange, the colors of the desert, of heat,
of barefoot children and the joy of nothingness.
While in the distance, I half hope to find you
behind a rickshaw selling coconut water. Roosevelt,
here in Georgia, during sunset, I sit outside
and watch the chimney swifts circle the house
making their chirp chirp sound. The sun moves effortlessly
through the crowds of pines and pecan, the community
garden now turned, muscadine vines all but spent.
Fall gardening is soon. Gourds and hops, and the bright
globes of the eggplant. And I wouldn’t call them blue,
because they’re not. But somehow the name comes to me,
as the swifts descend and in the distance a hound barks.

-- Class effort

2) Red is for the open wounds on the child's bare, dusty feet and unkempt toes.
-me

3) Women washed with Saris colord with Indian heat.
Red, Orange, and Yellow.
Grounded Creaters, and Powerful

4)Grounded and rooted in nothing. Because there is nothing and they laugh about nothing and they are happy just because. With each step taken as they romp, yellow laughter bursts from their mouths. Yellow is for personal power deep rooted in the soular plexus.