Poem: “The Color Mood”

from “Liber Floridus” — Lambert, Canon of St-Omer

Can you feel colors?

I feel them all the time slate in waves

Cold lake of untold depth

Other times I am blood sapped, blood drenched

Crimson sex

Dappled in the fire orange of a fire lily

Cynical in gray

Or dazzling in a mushroom-garden olive

Pine, copper entwined

All on a summer’s day

Pink violent teeth kiss my lips darling tongue

Glittered out, tea drinking, knife wielding

Cutting bread

In a seductive sort of way.

I am

Black and white like photographs

Hundreds of miles away

Chess pieces, dominoes, casting snake eyes

White like the snow

Or lost in blue

Lungs opening to the sky and sea

Common liberty, cans of hours

Pouring bold yet lazy solar flowers

Walking on acorns, talking to deer

I am feeling secret languages, power outages, lightning strike, blasted wood

Feeling orchid love meditation

On lunar New Years Day

And held peacefully in cluttered spaces

Mauve mixed with blue jay.

Cerulean, I am peachy

Singing solar plexus shoutouts

Crying silver in the darkened night

And plum, I am awakening to light.