Colors Passing Through

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 vase

on your desk. Every day

I will paint you, as women

color each other with henna

on 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: 

 Colors passing through us

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). 

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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.

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Beannacht / Blessing

John O’Donohue

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.

---

From Echoes of Memory (Transworld Publishing, 2010)

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Link one poem that is your response to this prompt.  

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