Something Blue: Colorless

Today I’ll share something of mine that I doubt could get published elsewhere, this one because it’s already (self-)published in my chapbook Of Elsewhere: An Exoskeleton, which you can buy on Kindle here for $0.99 (I hope you can excuse the plug, which I will make every time I circle back to “something blue”; the advantage of the Kindle book is, of course, that you see the text in the context of the copious illustrations.)

Colorless

If moon is silver to sun’s gold, is snow
the silver proper to the winter season?
No. Snow is white—full purity, no greed.
It blinds the eyes and burns the skin of travelers.

The snow gives back the sun without sun’s wanton
yellow. White’s the simple hue of death,
of every kind of light, of utter lack
of pigment, pages bare of lettering.

But white of snow and black of growing nights
were interspersed in moonlight to form silver.
(Black too’s the tint of death, of end of light,
of every kind of pigment. Type on page.)

As day grows shorter, black does not eat up
cold white, though black conceals. No, purity
wanes with sun’s waxing, warming strength, and mud
breaks down the icy binaries of winter.

And then comes gray, the nothing color. Gray’s
not even death, not even light, not even
absence, though it strives for silver, sends down
shining rain, drinks in the greens and purples

on pigeons’ chests. It’s only wandering.
It’s blindness and not darkness—vagueness, fog.
I hate gray more than any other hue,
because it is the color of the soul.

This poem is a conscious imitation of Anna Prismanova’s poetry and also (vaguely) Evernostian.