In the time of two breaths
there’s the twilight sweet spot
when everything hovers
between color and not.
White becomes silver
as shadows unfurl,
or maybe it’s pewter
or mother-of-pearl;
reds turn to velvet
with lavender nap,
blues, cupric sulfate,
with diamond wrap.
Yellows to brass
with gold overlays,
burnished in hot coal,
smoldering blaze.
And a palette is born
each day at its end
that no words can capture
but only pretend.
Of white it can be said
that breath is lost,
a waxen hour
on air embossed.
With thanks to my dear friend Donna for this gorgeous amaryllis.
Gardening with gomphrena,
the garden polka-dot,
tunes me in to smallness:
obvious it’s not.
It’s called a button flower,
but what we see is bract
that shouts in brazen scarlet
I am BIG compact!
Tantara! it blazes,
refusing to be shy,
fanfare for itself,
scalding to my eye.
If I were clothed
in raucous blue,
in alien world
I never knew,
I think I’d be
more erudite
than to flaunt myself
on terrain of white.
No, I didn’t skoosh it. I escorted it outside.
In how many ways
can Nature say bland?
How many greys
in March’s wasteland?
Thus the creek queried
churning leaden and duller
in sighs winter-wearied
“My kingdom for some color!”
With apologies to Shakespeare.
Yes, dear reader, this IS a color shot. Taken yesterday. Alas.
I’ve seen this before yet I haven’t
and so it makes me think twice
is the matter of braking
a wasteful unmaking
or a sagacious piece of advice?
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
I think on me
these colors would be
aesthetically illegal
but on the lily
high-headed and frilly
they are positively regal.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
What a vast expanse of bland
with nothing to enthrall
instant anesthetic for
a Tiffany or Chagall.
But just ahead the playground
with voices shrill and high
the color spills in laugh and screech
the ear sees
not the eye.
NOTE TO SELF
Look up
while it’s there.
Seek words
in the air
to memorialize
how color shrieves
the dying year
as all the sun of summer
bleeds through the leaves
to wooded bier.
Grounded eyes
cannot eulogize.
