Marge Piercy's poem "Colors Passing Through Us" inspired this prompt. Here's a snippet (The full poem is below):
Every day I will give you a color,like a new flower in a bud vaseon your desk. Every dayI will paint you, as womencolor each other with hennaon hands and on feet.
Piercy's full poem reminds me that the colors passing through (and their associations) paint the environment as well as the person within it.
Color!
Choose a moment in time and place to "paint" in color. Are you choosing something you observed? experienced? something only in the imagination? What colors float to the surface? What colors pass through?
Consider the use of color in these poems by Marge Piercy, Mary Oliver, and John Donahue:
BY MARGE PIERCY
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.
Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.
Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.
Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.
Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.
Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.
Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.
Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
From Colors Passing Through Us (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).
💚💚💚
Reckless Poem
BY MARY OLIVER
Today again I am hardly myself.
It happens over and over.
It is heaven-sent.
It flows through me
like the blue wave.
Green leaves—you may believe this or not—
have once or twice
emerged from the tips of my fingers
somewhere
deep in the woods,
in the reckless seizure of spring.
Though, of course, I also know that other song,
the sweet passion of one-ness.
Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the
tumbled pine needles she toiled.
And I thought: she will never live another life but this one.
And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
is she not wonderful and wise?
And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything
until I came to myself.
And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand,
I have flown from the other window of myself
to become white heron, blue whale,
red fox, hedgehog.
Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower!
Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched
among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.
From Five Points Volume 6, No.3 2002 Copyright Mary Oliver. All rights reserved.
💚💚💚
For Josie, my mother
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
Sorry I'm late! I was reading poems so lovely with color my intention to be on time wavered. Welcome here! I'm looking forward to your words. Enjoy the week!
ReplyDeleteThis prompt is a reading pleasure, Susan. Such delightful poems you've shared today!!! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful and colourful prompt! I LOVE the example poems so much!!!!!!!!! Looking forward to the responses. It is a grey day here on the coast, so the poems really brighten things up.
ReplyDeleteI love the Marge Piercy poem
ReplyDeleteJae Rose, I still can't sign in to comment on your post. I wanted to tell you I have days like this with many shades of blue passing through.
ReplyDeleteThe Marge Piercy poem is luscious....liked them all. Enjoyable prompt....Rall
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rall. Google won't let me post on your page. I wanted to comment on your poem that I don't know which I like more--the words or the photos--especially the pink refrigerator.
DeleteWhat an inspring prompt! Thank you, Susan.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the prompt - My confession is that i might not have totally fulfilled it with my poem. I think for me the battlefields and cemeteries of the Western Front and The Somme had a deep experience for me. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou TOTALLY fulfilled the prompt! Thank you.
DeleteLoved the poems which I had not encountered before -- Thank you! Hope you don't mind, Susan, but I found a poem from three years back that so suited the prompt that I linked it here.
ReplyDeleteNo problem. When you can't get a new poem, an old one will have to do.
DeleteAnother marvelous prompt. You gals are really on a roll! I had to let it cook for a bit, but it's up now.
ReplyDeleteYay! Always happy when you stop by, Shay.
DeleteThank you, Shay. Your poem is a joy to behold!
DeleteHi, I'm new here. I came across your page via other people I follow including Fireblossom and Sumana. The poem I have shared is not new - written last September - but I think it fits the prompt. Thanks so much for your prompt!
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Jo. Your poem is powerful. I hope you will visit the other posted poems.
DeleteMy poem may be more about the absence of color, the black and whites of newspapers in the misty dawn of a cash-strapped city.
ReplyDeleteThough I wish you had addressed "colors passing through" more directly, your poem suggests the absence of color and is quite powerful. Thank you very much for posting it!
DeleteI'm so late I almost didn't meet the deadline. I haven't written in ages. Thanks for the inspiration.
ReplyDeleteSo happy to see you here! And a poem too!
DeleteYour site won't let me sign in, so let me say here how much I love your title and was moved throughout each stanza as I read the poem. These words particularly moved me: "I am trying to be / strong in my weakness, be a light when I’m besieged with gray." There is a blessing to the grief, I know, time to spend with the lost one you know.
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