The Color of the World
Bone, parchment, limestone,
not quite colors,
like adobe huts, abandoned.
My pale bones nest in flesh
only for the moment, parchment carries
messages that were born in slaughter,
limestone holds onto skeletons
like a miser with his silver.
There are more vibrant hues
if your intent is to celebrate
but some of us have been bleached
for so long reds and blues
seem like false memories.
What you see in the heat waves
rising from the desert floor
that there is the real color of the world.
What grows on it,
what flies above it,
is only bawdy decoration
fated to fade into parchment,
limestone, bone. Time and the sun
work hand in hand and what they create
is no celebration.
.
Tom Barlow is an Ohio writer of novels, short stories and poetry whose work has appeared in many journals including Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, New York Quarterly, Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many more. See tombarlowauthor.com.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 