Shopping Center Gray

You wonder if my recent

photos affix the weather

in grays of absolute gloom.

The shopping center parking lot

draped in a spume of raincloud

looked flat enough to sadden

the brightest childhood Christmas.

I’d gone to Pet Smart to stock

the larder for the cats, but caught

this slump of landscape full-bore

and had to share it with you

to spread and thin out the pain.

But what if instead of gray

snapshot weather those clouds

were bursts of shellfire toppling

the sheaves and reams of culture?

The two worlds wars have faded,

and collective memory fails

to account for school shootings,

police executions, politics

that discolor all discussion

like madmen wielding crayons.

I say madmen to exclude

women like you who render

with exquisite color sense

a world parallel but distant,

one in which I’d like to live

if I could ever afford the rent.

The sky didn’t look at all

like photos of the Great War—

shrapnel and flung dirt sprouting

in organic sprigs of monochrome.  

It looked as sullen as a child,

bored with itself and everything.

I thought that photographing it

would lend an aesthetic dimension;                       

but then I remembered my errand,

and thought of cat food instead

of keeping my good eye focused

on the sorrow and pity of light.