BLACK

         I see only black today 
even as morning sun brushes
the sky pink. The only sound 
is wind soft—cold as a black sack. 

         You are leaving me.
Your smile freezes
as you walk out the door.
You have been a closed

         room to me from the first.
I have tried to cast light
under your door
but black is all I have seen.

         I had hoped for something
new as a tadpole
escaping its case.
Black is all I see.

Barbara Brooks is a retired physical therapist living in North Carolina and a member of the poetry group Poet Fools. She has three chapbooks: The Catbird Sang, A Shell to Return to the Sea, Water Colors. She has had published poems in a number of eclectic journals such as Jellyfish Whispers, Tar River Poetry, Peregrine and Third Wednesday, Silkworm.