Research on the Color White

+++++++After Deborah Keenan

Rope of pearls
on a woman’s
bare chest; a
lover’s teeth
in the dark
of night. In my
childhood, dolls
were fairy-tale
fair and wanted.
Swans made
beautiful endings
and moved
like slow ships.
What wedding dress
has ever lied?
Beginnings are
innocent.
A vine wraps
itself around
the mailbox post,
white with morning.
Fists loosen.
A lover
becomes heavy. Snow
sags the roof;
in it, an angel
like a body
laid bitterly down.
I worry this
could go on; then,
it goes on.
Our eyes look away
to spring and lily
of the valley like girls
in clusters of shade.