Unresolved

Reaching for words

Unresolved

She sipped black coffee,
tapping a rhythm like rain.

The sky is layered like taffy:
pale green on the horizon line,
two fingers of orange,
eyelid pink,
then a bruise of violet arranged
beneath deep blue, unlinked
like thoughts in noise dispersing.

No sleeper in town knows
that the birds discoursing--
the sparrow, the lark, unruly crows--
flit or flap and alight again,
orbiting their own sound.

It frustrated her to no end.

If they were not so loud,
she thought what figures
her thoughts would have drawn.
If not the chatter of perching singers,
what shadows resolved in the dawn?