The Reproductive Language of Colors

By

The difference between the earth and the sky
is not always obvious to me.
The flowers seem to grow from both places at once.
I still know of other differences:
bones become brittle but dreams do not.
Holes are perfect, but doors are not. And colors,
they procreate unlike all other things:
to make a new color, two colors vanish into each other.
It’s what I imagine the gods imagine to be divinity, you tell me.
If we were in a mystery, your body would be a bookcase
and I would search it for a way in.
Instead, I think of a line from the fourteen thousand
one hundred and eighth version of the bible.
This, I say, is why the best joy makes us feel sad
and full of life at the same time;
it turns us into roots that secure the flower,
it turns us into light that falls gently into the flower’s mouth.


Philip Jason