Yellow Leaves, Blue Leaves
Yellow and blue
blend green,
seen in leaves
in grass and vine
until dying time,
and yellow
is left behind.
What leaves
with the blue,
leaving yellow leaves
to wither, fade,
and fall?
That breath of air,
that respiring
returns to sky,
blue again
to rise, raising water.
Water blue
to condense
into its kind,
then gravitate to brown,
to ground and seed,
albino cotyledons
blue tinged, yellow grown
metamorphosing,
seed into leaf,
blue into yellow
yellow into green.
A Flight of Birds
A flight of birds escapes
to the south under
flannel gray cloud waves,
a turn of nature I observe
in deep green reflections
traversing the automobile hood.
A cloud of feathers
festoons the antique rose,
sown in branches by a circling wind,
not blooms awaiting blossoming,
but pennants for a bird transmigrating.
Indian Spring
(In Houston, Not Where You Live)
spring fooled fall and
slipped among its foliage,
still lush from recent rain
washing winds, clear and cool
from cloudless blue,
rattle paper lantern blooms
bougainvillea blossoms quiver
carnelian on the deck,
magenta at the fence,
delicate pink azaleas
complement a hibiscus
coral corsage,
making old feel new —
too good to be true,
one week from another norther.
—Winston Derden is a former journalist, fiction writer, and poet who resides in Houston, Texas. His poetry appears in New Texas, the Houston Poetry Festival anthology 2010 and 2012, Words and Art, Harbinger Asylum, Pink-Eye Lemonade, Big River Poetry Review, and Illya’s Honey. He read on the 2013 Word Around Town tour and appears as a host and featured reader at Houston-area poetry readings.
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