I just published my third Poetry Column for the local paper--you can read it by enlarging mage below. It's been fruitful relying on the column to write new poems since the novel-in-progress is taking up the majority of my time. I replicate the latest poem, "Color Theory" below since the newspaper format eliminated the stanza breaks. C'est la vie--at least it's a good fight to bring poetry to a wider readership.
COLOR THEORY
At the park
a toddler
wipes her
hands on
her blouse,
imprinting
green and
brown stains.
Among the
parents watching
their kids at play,
someone says,
“Too bad her
shirt is white.”
The toddler’s
mother replies,
“Fortunately,
Bleach exists.”
The mother
doesn’t share
the question
that infiltrated
her mind—
Why is white
associated
with purity?
When one combines
all the colors
of the universe,
the result
is their cancellation:
the color white.
Soon, the park
will greet
Winter. When
snow will fall
the milk powder
will cover everything—
everything like trees,
houses, cars, pets,
even people, to reveal
a nature as
indiscriminate as
a wildfire, whose
color is often depicted
as red, despite how
a flame’s hottest part
is colored white.
