Your Pink Camera (Draft 6)

Your Pink Camera (Draft 6)

Aftermath ( Your Pink Camera) (Draft 6)

Your missing Pink is a painful thing, dread
on a jagged edge —
too many days without you

You dressed in edgy pink like Dianthus
the sun dressed in angry red

In the pink of things
we had watched the sun rise,
swam in the rising tide of love
but omens turned us blue

What is there to do
when pink tides die out and
the blues come in

We thought all tides
smiled at us, and

We had heard
all the false alarms
so many years

Category three
was supposed
to be nothing.

We danced with
so many false alarms
when hype was in fashion

So we danced in so many storms,
and we loved to survive with a kiss, but

stormy Sandy days came just after merry us;
where things were washed away, seagulls cried
and I worried about you, ’cause

I gave you the pink camera you’d wanted, and
you said you’d visit the beach with it to
hear the seagulls cry blue
the ocean roar

Said you’d get batteries for it
after you got a cute pink computer

And everything about you
was so cute — I’d get you
a pink sky if you wanted it,
and pink shoes, and pink scarves,
and if I needed to
I’d paint the town pink
if that would be distinctly you

Oh pink, I miss you.

Stormy day floods on first floors,
things washed away, but
weren’t you on the fourth, or
did you go out

Don’t know
haven’t heard from you.
Did you get the batteries
and go into the storm surge?

Stormy days
things washed away
and I haven’t seen your pink
but I gave you the pink camera

In Hurricane days
things were washed away
seagulls cried blue
and videos were shown

Maybe it was you in the pink,
who took those anonymous pictures —
I haven’t heard

I miss your pink, had
missed you in the swirls

but, yeah, it’s your style —
you could have posted video P2012:
seagulls following your pink camera

Stormy days, dead things
washed away
seagulls cried blue

Bulldozers and sand walls would be
protection against the waves, but too late.
Did you get batteries and a pink dress?

Didn’t you say you’d visit the beach
to hear seagulls cry

Next time you see the seagulls
tell them I love them, ok?

— Douglas Gilbert