White pill for pain
pink for nausea
yellow for calm –
wind stampedes blue cloud
a Franz Marc painting –
but today I will not think of blue horses
cobalt hills are larkspur
not horses
miles dissolve but waiting is interminable –
slick pages of OJ’s trial
Hunts’ financial schemes
cigarette lawsuits
a lazy ceiling fan whinnies
nuzzles my neck
a woman with liver-spotted hands knits
who, what, and where are given
doctor details when and where
why remains a question
sugar cubes sweeten my coffee
apples fill pies
no horse of any color canters past
as I buy outrageous gecko-print pajamas
feathered mules
colorful straw hats
I recall llamas thronging dirt roads
near Cusco
young moose wandering
downtown Anchorage
shaggy ponies – not one of them blue –
grazing Shetland roadsides
tomorrow –
I will not think about cancer
Ann Howells has edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years, recently taking it digital, to be found at: illyashoney.com. Her publications are: Black Crow in Flight (Main Street Rag), Under a Lone Star (Village Books), Letters for My Daughter (Flutter), an anthology of D/FW poets she edited, Cattlemen & Cadillacs (Dallas Poets Community), and Softly Beating Wings which won the William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest 2017. Ann’s work appears widely in small press and university journals; she has four Pushcart nominations.