Sunday, November 7, 2010

Poem of the Week #149

Spectral Analysis of Tears

In tears are bands of every color:
There is green for the lawn
I crawled across as a child;
blue, the day I left for college;
purple, the day I returned.
There is white for my wedding.

There is lipstick red for anger
and blood red for shame.
There is orange for every
tropical sunrise I missed,
and pink for the prayers
I forgot to say.

There is brown distilled
from dirt and worms
and yellow derived from the sun’s
sweat and then, the blackest
black: the place we go
while we wait to be born.

Stinging rainbow bound by saline
turns colors into one, converts them
to a small moon slipping over
the canyon rim of my eye;
clear as liquid mirror
or briny bead of rain.

Lisa Vihos

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