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Color has a quiet history here
The creek, reservoir and river as clear
and toneless as air on a calm day
Even rainwater runs mute brown
And when wind stirs the prairie
dust and weeds tumble in a grey line dance
Winter howls in white
or in the crystalline of cut glass
Fall, spring and summer live as plain
and pale as honesty
Except for the tease of temporary
from penny blossoms that scatter
wealth of color like Easter eggs
Or the sun that briefly bares its soul
in sunsets and rainbow pastels
Earth tones weave through greens to hide wildlife
And hues of sky and mountain blues long ago
became invisible behind the cloud of everyday
People wearing primary colors
rode in on the train
Synthetic dyes from cities
as loud but short-lived as the whistle
They came in mail trucks
inside Sears and Roebuck catalogues
Whose pages cried Buy me in outhouses
before they were returned to the earth
Only if crops were good on a given year
might colors have sung their praises
on women and children in church
But never the scarlet-woman color
Red didn't shout from lips or clothes in public
And blood still lives a private life here
sneaking out in hospitals and slaughter sheds
Thoughts of crime wash clean in the silence
of social control in such a well-mannered world
surrounding the clotheslines
From Wild as in Familiar (Finishing Line Press, 2011).
Used with the author's permission.
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