Different Colors

You’re always going to find different colors
If you look long enough,
Whether it’s the light playing on the surface,
Adding colored shadows and shades,
Or the skin beneath the coat
Coming through because of the angle of our eyes,
Or some fantasy about rainbows,
About seeing them everywhere, rainbows,
Those magic transitions rainbows
The color is never precise,
Never definite but goes on in richness,
Goes on in depth and dimension,
Goes on something like a narrative goes on,
Colors telling a harsh story,
Colors of the oral tradition sharing epics,
Colors of the mockery of black and white,
Creative color chameleon color,
Called many different names color,
Called stupid names color,
Like the name of some nothing color,
Or the name of something more maligned than the name
Of nothing color,
Color of nothing, one woman said,
Her hair the color of cinnamon creme,
The other and the first in a room colored
Mostly like a dark green leaf,
Its carpet some fruit and earth at once,
Paintings on all four walls, many paintings many colors,
Many different ages of color
And the fading of color out into memory,
Into the white of a bomb-lit sky,
Into the rust of seasonal departures,
The rust of going nowhere,
The door, a solid door, a solid blue
Attacked from within by rainbows,
Falling apart at its rigid moody borders,
It’s true, it’s all just Maya,
The first went on, looking out the window with her friend
Out onto the colors of chores or adventure,
The colors of leave-taking,
Growing less and less familiar as the road endures,
The colors are nothing, really, but a landscape
Bright or dark as seasons are bright or dark,
No matter how stubborn or stark they are,
No matter how red the red,
No matter how orange the orange,
No matter how yellow the yellow--
You know, yellow is the darndest one,
She laughed with the second, her friend, yellow
Is the color my daughter uses to paint the sun,
But look at the sun!  Have you ever seen such display
Of the disarray of any set notion of color,
I mean it’s fire, fire so hot it burns green-blue,
Fire of every color, conflagration of color!--
No matter how green the green,
No matter how blue the blue,
No matter how violet and violent the violet
The color of the roses of your aunt’s funeral,
Each one is really only a play that stays awhile,
Before the players get tired of their roles,
Adapt to one another’s parts
Or change the story all together,
Something of a story-teller color,
Leaning back in her rocking chair like a grandmother,
The other woman disagreed and made it known:
Color all the way down!  Take off my color you find-- Red, take off my red you find the white-yellow-grey
Bone, take off down to the marrow--yellow-purple
Marrow, take off my royal yellow-purple,
The soot of cremation, the tapestry of grey cremation,
Take off my grey gown
To reveal the churning cauldrons of color's creation,
Dispose of the stars, get stuck for an eon
In what can only be called cosmic pudding,
Get stuck in the thick color of that for an eon
Before you rid yourself of its gummy tones:
There it starts again, like a sunrise
For tireless animals under the sun,
Coloring the earth with an entire spectrum of things,
Colors of sex and food and shelter,
There rises the inescapable
Color of things, story-teller
With endless time to pick up where she left off
In the parade, even after those gaps
When a little girl asks her mother,
Tugging at her hair the color of cinnamon cream,
Little girl in a grey gown, Mommy,
Where’s the color?