Study in Monochrome

You — you in the coat of gray,
     the dappled gray, the threaded gray,
           whose figure stops, who stops to sway
     in the lavender haze of a winter day;

you — you in that threaded coat,
     the coat now dappled a lavender-gray,
           your head arched back to look and see
     the branches of a spreading tree;

the crooked branches of a tree,
     a spreading tree, the silhouette branches
           crazed across a field of gray on a winter day,
     across the clouds, the clouds a cool white-silver gray —
           the silhouette branches, swaying in strokes of deep warm gray —

the strings of the tree and the clouds and the evening
     pull at your head to dance and sway
           with the breeze that dances dappled branches
     in a round, hypnotic way —

and you, and I, and the winter sky
     dance in a trance-like reverie,
           as who are you and who am I
     and where is the end of the winter sky
           all blend with the gray and the gray in the gray,
     in a deepening field of gray.