How many shades of color is regret?
I see this in my sleep, then wake to find
The shadow of a phantom bassinet
That long ago we lost, and left behind
How many different pigments would I change
In paintings set and fixed in bygone years:
Too late to buy back and to rearrange
Those oils for new watercolor tears
How shaky now the hand, how dark the eye
That once the world took, in a glance, entire —
How bright once seemed the future, in its frame,
And fine the walls to which it once aspired
Then you, my love, picked up the brush to start,
And turned those colors into works of art
Beautiful.