“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.”
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA, Spanish poet, dramatist, and priest (1600-1681)
Archives for posts with tag: colors
OF SEEING GREEN
by Ruth Moon Kempher
The mind. . .
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.”
Andrew Marvell, “The Garden”
The turn on is
modest green like
the Pharaoh’s miasma
creeping in under the door
whose seeds
signal green, as
the issuing leaves will be
sunbuttered / greengroping creatures
jostled together
jolting cool static from each other—
a shock we might, accidentally, one day
between fragments of o’clock ourselves touch
whose need is glass green
as in tavern neon, or gumdrops
puddling on the floor. Spectral. No.
Wet. Like padded caterpillar feet. Green gore.
SOURCE: Originally published in Casa de los Cinco Hermanos (Pueblo, Colorado). “Of Seeing Green” is featured in the Silver Birch Press Green Anthology — a collection of poetry and prose from more than 70 authors around the world — available at Amazon.com.
IMAGE: “Peaceful Understanding” by Sharon Cummings. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruth Moon Kempher, an ex-navy brat who was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, has had her poetry and short prose appear in journals and other periodical publications since 1958, and has published many other people’s work since 1994 through her Kings Estate Press in St. Augustine, Florida. She is retired from owning a tavern and from teaching—first for Flagler College while attaining her BA and graduating with the college’s first class; and later, after achieving her MA at Emory University in Atlanta, in the English Department of St. Johns River Community College. The latest of her thirty-three (mostly small) collections is Key West Papers (Casa de Cinco Hermanos Press, Pueblo, Colorado). Her poetry appears in the Silver Birch Press Silver Anthology, Green Anthology, and Summer Anthology.
THE BLUE
by David Baker
heron is gray, not blue, but great enough
against brown-tipped bowed cattails to be
well-named, is known for its stealth, shier
than a cloud, but won’t fly or float away
when it’s scared, stands there thinking maybe
it’s invisible though it’s not—tall, gray,
straight as a pole among the cloudy reeds.
Then it picks up one stem leg. This takes time.
And sets it down just beyond the other,
no splash, breath of a ripple, goes on
slowly across the silt, mud, algae-
throttled surface, through sedge grass,
to stand to its knees in water turning
grayer now that afternoon is evening.
Now that afternoon is evening
the gray heron turns blue, bluer than sky,
bluer than the mercury blue-black still pond.
So when did it snag the bullfrog
hanging, kicking, in its scissor beak?
To look so long means to miss the sudden.
It strides around like a sleek cat
from pond to bank and back, blue tall bird,
washing the frog, banging it against stones,
pecking almost as if it doesn’t know
what to do now that it’s caught such a thing.
How fast its beak must be to shoot out
like an arrow or that certain—as it’s called—
slant of light. Blue light. Where did it go?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David Baker received degrees in English from Central Missouri State University before earning a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah in 1983. His first collection of poems, Laws of the Land, was published in 1981, followed by Haunts in 1985. Since then, Baker has published many collections of poetry and is the author of three books of criticism. Among Baker’s awards are fellowships and prizes from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, Poetry Society of America, Society of Midland Authors, and the Pushcart Foundation. He is currently a Professor of English and the Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing at Denison University and is a faculty member in the M.F.A. program for writers at Warren Wilson College. Baker currently resides in Granville, Ohio, where he serves as Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.
Illustration: “Great Blue Heron,” Chinese brushwork painting on silkboard by Tracey Allyn Greene. The Chinese calligraphy along the left is a Yosa Buson haiku, “Evening wind: water laps the heron’s legs.” Visit Tracey’s web page here.
AQUA VITA
by Dale Sprowl
A color of aqua lives,
fantastically far from real;
Once I saw it behind Pablo Neruda’s house
in a dream,
a stripe of Chilean ocean, cool and green.
Another time,
though this one real,
I saw it at the beach on Aruba,
Blown with racing winds,
sea over shallow white sand
pale as a pool.
Once I found it in nature
as I stared down at ice floes on Greenland,
white chunks cut into black lake,
each framed by numinous liquid refreshment.
And another time I saw it.
Would you call it real or not?
In Vincent’s sky in “The White Orchard.”
When I saw it,
I wept,
uncontained,
until I saw it again in “The Plow”
and knew I was at home there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dale Sprowl teaches writing at Biola University in La Mirada, California. During summers, she administrates and teaches at the Young Writer’s Project at UCI. Her work with the UCI Writing Project began in 1981, and she has contributed to the UCIWP texts on the teaching of writing. Her first chapbook of poems, The Colors of Water, published by Finishing Line Press in 2007, and her second chapbook, Moon Over Continent’s Edge (2009), have been nominated for a California Book Award. Her poems have also appeared in PEARL, Fire, A New Song, Ancient Paths, and Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places. She earned her bachelor’s degree in humanities and in history as well as a master’s degree in history from Pepperdine University. An Educator Associate for the American Psychoanalytic Association, she lives in Newport Beach, California, with her husband.
“Aqua Vita” and other poetry by Dale Sprowl appears in the Silver Birch Press Green Anthology, a collection of poetry & prose from authors around the world — available at Amazon.com.
Painting: “The White Orchard” by Vincent van Gogh (1888)
Haiku
by Jack Kerouac
The low yellow
moon above the
quiet lamplit house.
Photo: Ally Beag, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.”
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA, Spanish poet, dramatist, and priest (1600-1681)
AQUA VITA
by Dale Sprowl
A color of aqua lives,
fantastically far from real;
Once I saw it behind Pablo Neruda’s house
in a dream,
a stripe of Chilean ocean, cool and green.
Another time,
though this one real,
I saw it at the beach on Aruba,
Blown with racing winds,
sea over shallow white sand
pale as a pool.
Once I found it in nature
as I stared down at ice floes on Greenland,
white chunks cut into black lake,
each framed by numinous liquid refreshment.
And another time I saw it.
Would you call it real or not?
In Vincent’s sky in “The White Orchard.”
When I saw it,
I wept,
uncontained,
until I saw it again in “The Plow”
and knew I was at home there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dale Sprowl teaches writing at Biola University in La Mirada, California. During summers, she administrates and teaches at the Young Writer’s Project at UCI. Her work with the UCI Writing Project began in 1981, and she has contributed to the UCIWP texts on the teaching of writing. Her first chapbook of poems, The Colors of Water, published by Finishing Line Press in 2007, and her second chapbook, Moon Over Continent’s Edge (2009), have been nominated for a California Book Award. Her poems have also appeared in PEARL, Fire, A New Song, Ancient Paths, and Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places. She earned her bachelor’s degree in humanities and in history as well as a master’s degree in history from Pepperdine University. An Educator Associate for the American Psychoanalytic Association, she lives in Newport Beach, California, with her husband.
“Aqua Vita” and other poetry by Dale Sprowl will appear in the Silver Birch Press Green Anthology, a collection of poetry & prose from authors around the world — available March 15, 2013.
Painting: “The White Orchard” by Vincent van Gogh (1888)
Silver Birch Press 