Dark, The Absence of Color

dark, the absence of color
black and swirl and abyss
one step above an Escher print,
depending on the viewer’s eye.
the weight of the bleak bends no minds;
thoughts remain satisfactory victims.
whizzing by
breaking windows and sound barriers
an unidentified flying
foreign
object
splatting and sprinkling and smiling
the opposite wall with a thick liquid.
upon closer examination,
(the only kind they are willing to offer)
here we have it, they say.
in reality, two ells from a literally,
a wounded, paint-spilled
spiritless shell of a balloon
whose dying words still ooze from resilient lips:
“through the prism.”
yellow, yellow, yellow…
echoes echoes echoes.
no sooner can the grief swell up within them
(losing such a frightening, mysterious creature causes frightening, mysterious grief)
than does the creature’s army ambush,
through rafters and expectations,
slats and stock and straw.
pigment slips down faces of a shelter’s cube.
the color is relentless.
as dodging truth to protect ignorance often does,
retaining a grasp on the abyss proves futile.
playing hide and seek in the Great Plains.
taping orange leaves to their branches.
pressing eyes closed to hold on to the dark
for no other reason than to secure the familiar
surely paints eyelids.
and as the sun rises
(for how long had it slept?)
and breaks through the broken window yet again
a refracted rainbow brightens the barn
doors and floors and boars.
wilted soldiers,
victorious in their vibrancy,
drape the ground.
color
Color!
drapes the very air.
abyss stems now not from depths of darkness
but depths of novelty.
and through the prism in the pane,
what’s left of rainbow
drifts slowly to the sky.