The sailors of Cinque Terre, five fishing villages on the Italian Riviera coastline, could locate their homes from the sea by their distinctive colors. 

To the Sailors of Cinque Terre

Stacks of houses hold fast

to rocks which fall straight

into the sea.

From your boat,

your eyes move across their graying silhouettes,

which darken, moment by moment,

at dusk.

Until, just as the sun is setting,

a final shaft of light

brings the mountain to pastel life.

Terra cotta, saffron, pistachio and pink

call.

And your eyes fix on the color of your heart

as you steer for home.

Even in the moonlight,

color is your lodestar.

Terra cotta, saffron, pistachio and pink

sing, like a sirens,

beckoning you home.

photo by Collyn Ware

For Griffin, almost five

Three goldfinches sit on a wire.

They punctuate the cornflower sky

like saffron exclamation points.

Look! Look! Look!

Wren-bodied, but mighty,

their golden breasts blaze

in the noonday sun.

These are waifs with heart.

Like you at four-almost-five

with eyes that flash in the spaces between minutes

and hands like hummingbirds

that tease the air.

But you lean into me,

a favorite book between us,

and we linger in the land of words,

in the leisurely way that lines wrap around

and into the next, spilling

onto a new page, extending the story.

Until, fingers aquiver,

you take my hand and pull me out the door.

Look! Look! Look!

Three goldfinches on a wire,

and one boy

who punctuates my life.

With love,

your Grandma

Song of the Cottonwoods

The summer voice of the cottonwoods

lies transparent in baby breaths

on the water.

It floats in faint wisps

in the channels and along the shoreline.

In the evening at the water’s edge,

you can dip your hands into the shallows

and catch a whisper,

a single syllable of promise.

There is sacredness in words unspoken,

in such fragile potential that moves,

as it will,

in the breeze.

And at dawn when the day is a rosy glaze

upon the lake,

there are filaments so fine

that they are lost in the light.

This is the song of the cottonwoods.

Shannon Vesely