A busy weekend with my daughter’s Class Day, Senior Prom and Graduation had me away from my computer for the day. Sorry about the lateness of the posting.
This week we let color tell our tales. Beauty blooms.

Marie’s Beautiful Bloom:

As one who still finds a fresh box of sharp crayons one of the joys of life, I chose Jane Shlensky’s “Garden Art” as my pick this week.

Jane’s “friendly acronym” introduces us to color’s energy. After all, “…color did not live in a box of worn wax.” The words that follow conjure vivacious images of nature’s rich diversity of color — complete with taste, scent, and sensation — along with “the promise of rainbows,” and “the magic of mixing life with life to create new hues.”

Now, where did that eighth crayon go?

GARDEN ART by Jane Shlensky

ROYGBIV—
we memorized
this friendly acronym,
pointed toward our crayon
boxes with each wax stick
labeled, but color did not
live in a box of worn wax.
We imagined a kindly man
in overalls, Mother Nature’s
gardener, our Roy, an earthy
dirt-squeezing gentleman,
conversant with leaf shapes
and tints, fruiting vines,
sun-kissed citrus, berries,
tomatoes, radishes, and ripened
squash, their waxy necks entwined.
His middle initial conjured
freshly mowed lawns, string beans
hanging from staked vines, cucumbers,
lettuce, cabbage, jungle-striped
fleshy-hearted melons,
corn stalks and pale ears,
pearly kernels hidden
in layered shucks,
the foliage of all vegetable life.
Mr. Biv, we imagined, had
his grower’s thumb involved
in every step of gardening,
pocketing seed pods, shelling
sunflowers for birds of
every feather—grosbeaks, chickadees,
cardinals, finches—rushing
to feed at his hands,
his head firmly planted
in the overarching depth of sky,
thundering clouds a lullaby
to his ears, piqued for the plunk
of droplets on dry soil, his nose
tweaked for the smell of ripening
and ozone after rain,
his eyes lifted for
the promise of rainbows,
the magic of mixing life
with life to create
new hues.

Walt’s Pick:

A broken heart painted in the spectrum of the rainbow. A simple rendering of painful optimism. The poem speaks for itself. My favorite this week:

THE COLORS OF MY DAY by Paula Wanken

Black.
The inky darkness
that envelopes me.

Gray.
The dreary cloud
that covers my days.

Blue.
My eyes, like pools of water,
filled with tears.

Red.
My nose,
sore from blowing.

Green.
The color I see
on the other side of the fence.

Purple.
The bruise that is
my broken heart.

Yellow.
The brilliance of sunshine
that I trust will shine on my world once more.