Color Storm!

Color storm! Strange to find not one

of these gust-blustering whipped

winds so lavishly imbued with hues

had any taste or scent or palpability.

They looked far too eruptively delicious

not to meet the prospect of a mouth

with some voluptuous perfection, paint

the tongue with flavor. But I could savor

running with them, ribbons, darts, bright

shafts, advancing, pirouetting, bursting

into brilliancy like fireworks or flowers –

how had I ever even vaguely entertained

what once I had been sure of: color

was a nuisance and a yawn,

a who-could-give-a-damn, no match

for other powers? And I? A man

content with tan or cream. But if this

color storm were dream, if it had not

materially brilliantly in every hue rained

on and into me as it now seemed to do,

oh let me not awake from it unstained.

Color was no yawn. Color was the whole

shebang, the only deal, the essence

and the business of the real. All there is,

is color. Color is what’s going on.

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