Poems in Color

Because the world is, so.

Photo by Toushif Alam on Unsplash

My last couple of posts have been intense, and I love that about them. This week, though, we’re having a “Lighten up, Francis” interlude. Here are a couple of poems about color and (therefore) light.

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KITCHEN


Cream and gold and white
and cobalt blue –
walls cracked in cream,
cream linoleum patterned in gold,
golden-warm wood of the table
and the little rocking chair;
blue in stripes on worn white towels,
the sides of a tumbler,
a glass rabbit peering
around the plant pot on a shelf.
Golden runs of piano notes
from the radio, white noise
from the fridge, a wind-up clock
ticking seconds like blue paint drops
onto the linoleum, into the cream-
and-golden morning air.
Time steals, and gives, and steals again.

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GREEN


In the needles of fir trees,
in the leaf-buds of sycamores,
not the same, and the same.

In a clover patch,
in a cornfield,
not the same, and the same.

I knew a woman once who said
she started to believe in God
the day she tried to count how many shades
she saw of it, along a country lane.

In a cat’s eye,
in a sea wave,
not the same, and the same.

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[You can listen to an audio version of the poems using the little widget above the photographs.]

Both these poems were drafted in April, during the poem-a-day challenge I joined to celebrate National Poetry Month. “Kitchen” was written in response to a prompt that went something like: describe a scene or a moment in as much detail as you can, then end the poem with an abstract statement that somehow (in your own mind at least) echoes or summarizes what you’ve written about. I drafted the poem sitting at my kitchen table; it’s where I sit most mornings for my first writing session of the day, a no-expectations scribble session that I often begin with a description of the room I’m sitting in. And where did the last line come from? I think I’d realized recently that I have lived literally half my life in this same small, comfortably-aging apartment, brewing my morning coffee at the same stove and sitting with it at the same kitchen table. That, and describing to myself — again, again — the tick of the kitchen clock … well, the last line just arrived.

I’ll bet you can figure out the prompt for “Green.” Our informal April poetry group produced a whole rainbow of poems that day. I like this one for its spareness and rhythm, and for the way it low-key honors the classic rock song structure: verse, refrain, verse, refrain, bridge, verse, refrain. Plus, you know, it’s about green things, and also (in the bridge) about a friend who was dear to me, and dearer to those who knew her best.

Your turn, friends. Talk to me about colors: the ones you love, the ones you write about, the ones you look at every day.