NOT THE COLORS

Not the gaunt colors
of a still life
discovered in
a portrait of Zadok
the priest, by Handel
we played on timpani
and strings
but the candle images
freely smudged at the back
at my great aunt's visit
to the coronation date
harboring her own face
by the Thames river gate
we are like early morning birds
thirsting and lately hungry
as a poet fishing for words.