The color of dawn is hopeful.
Its bright clarity comes ringing its bell.
With whole universes nested inside,
it sings with promise.  It says, “Anything.”

Then afternoon shambles in, its sun shading into night.
Its heavy golden egg yolk over-medium,
clings to building faces.  The color of days gone by,
days leaving us now as we speak, mourned before their demise,
pre-emptively missed, a longed-for bittersweet taste in our mouths.

The color of afternoon makes me want to call the day back,
relive my whole life, try again for Gatsby’s green light.
Possibility dwindles, unrealized universes close up shop saying,
“We did not happen today.  Choices were made around us.  We remain unlived.
Get home safely.”

Possibility grows one day older and one day older after that.
Changed by the day before and the day before that.
Choices are built up on the shale of prior choices.
A foundation of disposition, genes, history, and the
hopes and fears patinaed with the grime of our passing days.

The color of night rings the closing bell,
a muted dusty sound as though muffled by gauze or fog or great distance.
A cocoon spinning itself out of fresh history,
swaddled in the paths that were preferred over other paths.
The sound and color of doors closing behind you
for the last time turn the lights off.
Every dawn brings new houses with new doors and new lightswitches.

When morning comes, I pause with my hand on that shiny new doorknob,
I fermata on the threshold, eyeing those universes waiting to become.
Expectant, nervous in the wings.  I ring out with possibility, I say
I say, “Anything.”