Richard Vetere is a native of Maspeth. He is living and I’ve been blessed to know him much of my adult life. He’s not only a poet but he writes screenplays, teleplays, novels and is a devoted playwright and teacher. He recently received an award from the Beverly Hills Film Festival for Best Screenplay titled Caravaggio. This poem was published by Bordighera Press; It made me see snow in a different way, not just the white stuff I’m trudging through to get to the bus stop, but the entire landscape of colors in the surrounding area. I’ll be honest I’m not a fan of snow. This is a good poem to usher out the winter.
Orange is a lit window in the dark
or a rooftop on the other side of the sky.
The colorless sound of a dog’s bark
or an oriole on a branch before it flies.
There’s a fireplace glowing on the hill
where imagined strangers sit around and talk.
I was one of them once, a long time ago,
standing at an open door, watching it snow.
Blue is the snow on the fields at night
and the cars on the highway passing by,
and the color of your eye when you flash on a light
and the moon rising in the sky.
I never see much red in the winter months
except for the sun rising above my bed.
Can you feel the wind as you dream?
Does it matter what all the colors mean?
White is the darkness that never goes away
stretching to the horizon in the middle of the night.
White is the glare of a thousand years of day
burning with the illusion of a warm, lingering light.
I remember you laughing as we lay in the snow
helpless as the world tilted for an afternoon.
What are the other colors in a snowstorm?
What moments do we choose to shed, or to mourn?
The rainbow lives in a driving wind
though everyone else is tucked away safe inside.
You were once right here, where it all began,
waiting for your clothes as they dried.
I wonder who else sees only the snow
blasting through the heavy, angry air?
What separated you from me, and everything else?
Where do all the colors go, after all the colors melt?
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