Even without a camera, humans are always drawing

With light: every two hundred feet across the bridge

Street lamps hold out hope in pools of grey light

Across the tar. From a distance the bridge is almost

Perforated, an embroidery picked out in stars.

Holidays bring out our artistry. Look at the building,

Its roof, eaves and colonnade shining like a geometry

Problem written with a magic wand. And over there,

Across the river, fir trees like pointed wizard hats

Shimmer in gold, red, green and blue, silently.

But summer is best, when we let the colors fly

Into the black silk sky, an explosion of fire flowers:

Ice blue chrysanthemums, connect-the-dot

Scarlet tiger lilies, and the flash and flare of white

Snowbells that fall in a flurry into the river.

The river reflects on the sizzling stamens

As they disintegrate into its depths. It thinks

We are making offerings and perhaps we are.

Take these scattered petals of fire.

Grant us, in return, a year full of light.