Chameleon

Widow woman,

on twilight's glint-starved stairway,

Risking again,

that singularly shadowed venture,

life.

Shoulder-gazing,

struggling,

brittle grays delineate

a fresh, chalky leap

in the dark.

All for late limelight.

Here's a play

for color-theoried days

on the easel still.

Seeing anew

through worn prisms,

rainbow-sprayed,

not quite saturated,

defying

the probity of social hues,

used as weapons

against the aged.

Strong born, red and warm,

released at surgeon's whim

by the cleanest cut.

Then unshuttered

eyes accepted photons,

no paucity of dreams,

just youth's achromatic blur.

Spun the spectrum.

Hard.

May

I

now

be

an infant chameleon?

Resist eternity, fade to white?

Forego a heady dash

to be that charcoaled crosshatch,

limboed and pallid?

Better

look to live

in iridescent gulps.

A dazzlement

of final hours,

brilliantly alone.