It's one of those color blood days,
When everything looks unnatural vivid.
Like yesterday you were just looking at the skin of things, but not anymore.
It's one of those raspberry juice days, one of those days
When you can see old Jean sitting on her rotting porch,
With her white hair and her sad black dog,
Crushing a few baskets of those things and draining the seeds,
Making something fine.
We're sitting on the edge of the crick now,
On one of those half pretend days,
Sitting on mossy seats that grow just for you to sit down and kill em.
We're talking about Roger.
So you two are real now, I say, very casual.
You laugh and say,
Define real.
And you pick up a piece of wood near your leg.
It's a nice piece, and you turn it in your hands all soft like.
I half expect you to take out your knife,
Take out your old pocketknife and let it glint in the sun and start carving
Away at that thing like you do.
Real is someone who doesn't lie and use you, I say.
I can almost imagine those small dark skillful hands
Making something beautiful out of that dead chunk.
But instead you raise your color blood hand,
Raise the white wood high,
Throw it out to the water like a gift.
Someone who deserves your love.
I watch that thing sink, the light playing over it and turning it blue,
Then black, like your hands, like Jean's sad little dog,
And disappear.
I've never really called myself a fan of poetry, but I like this. The only grammatical error I saw was in the second line where unnatural should be unnaturally.
You use the line "one of those.....days" at the beginning and close to the middle. I think that if you added one more line such as that near the end it could add a tiny sense of repetition to this poem, and create a three-part structure/form. It seems like you were on some sort of path towards that because the 1st and 9th lines are where you place the "one of those...days" lines.
I like the wood symbol, especially the bit about the carving.
Anyway, this was a cool read. I hope I gave you some food for thought.