Palette or Palate

Grace is always within you

it is said...Hmmm...

I think grace is pink

which is why its hard to find

when all you see is red.

Love is not all crimson cupcakes

still, there is gratitude, 

warm and orange. 

Citrus can be sweet or sour,

it depends on more than taste.

Every word

a jagged cube of ice

to crush or to melt,

linger into nothing...

Yet nourishing

by experience,

like white or wisdom-

or the sun.

What do I know

of divinity-

But hell

and evil, is black 

Absence or All...

Diluting color

of meaning, when

Time is demanded.

Faith is ordered.

I taste metal,

or my own

blood

while

sensing my fragile

green mortality

All over.

Painting by Vincenzo Irolli (1860-1949), in Public domain, 'Young boy eating a watermelon' via Wikimedia Commons.

Global warming Returns

There was fire reflected in his eyes,

and though he had been so kind lately,

been treating me tenderly,

it all shattered 

in the calm evening 

after dinner was served and the dishes were done.

There was no wind but things carried. 

He screamed at me 

from the doorway, from deep in his diaphragm,

‘Get Out Now!’

And I thought he was angry at me 

for a flashing moment-I felt

enraged-by the tone.

I noticed, however,

his face was glowing-not from

the evening sunset.

My eyes went south-

east, thirty feet tall, 

a basket of burning serpents

squirmed atop a roof and were licking  the sky,

devouring a tree,

the roof next door is on fire! 

A black plume expands like dye in water,

like a volcano that erupts before projecting 

sound.

In the long hot silence, 

before the sirens in the distance, 

my heart

strains to find a steady rhythm amidst

the pops, cracks and snaps. 

The cats are hiding, children are 

lining the street filming,

hoses are flowing anemic,

I am frozen in place.

I think of how we just survived the flood.

When the fire finally died, 

we waited for the third

and last

good Friday before we may rise and shine

only to be born again

on Sunday. 

Painting by George Hitchcock c. 1904, 'Easter Sunday' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.