the option of innocence

if i were to say blue
and spell it to you
with three extra letters
i would be cheating
it would be an admission,
there -
is your admission,
there is the gate, the take the
five syllables,
first
and third line
making sense of fall
and winter,
of the frozen toe
the child left to feed sea gulls,
the lonely
mother
leafing her magazine
i know and do not know the city
is raised daily
and the fires start
and stop with the
dawn and no one will ever
stop that
there is no utopia, not
while there are human hands, not
while there is fire