How Do We Color Love?

Step out on a clear December night
and look up past the shadows of tall pine,
the shape of smoke escaping the chimney
into the white hot stars
and you’ll realize it is impossible
to describe the color of love.

Try, if you will, to make the mind move
into the rustling sweetness of happiness,
kick your feet through those leaves of joy,
rake them into a pile of pleasure,
walk away and turn quickly
to run back into ecstasy
only to fall heavily, confused
to the cold frozen ground of expectation.

When I was a girl I stretched out in the warm
green grasses of shaded June afternoons
and imagined myself into the clouds
above the Minnesota prairies.
I could get there,
a little bird of hope,
resting at the edges of that misty whiteness,
it was where I first knew the infinity of the soul
rested only in my young body for a moment
and then it learned it must rise up to the call
of our mother’s loving voice.

When you close your eyes each night
at the end of a long day of trying
not to be swallowed
by the grief of all the strangers--
by planting the healing mind in the center
of each suffering heart—
what color do you see?

If I am lucky,
if I pay attention to the collective breath
of the gentle universe
in the stars of one clear December night,
I see the brilliant purple Aurora Borealis
start at the edge of my dreaming,
the ripple of beautiful forgiveness
for needing to know again
that this kind of enormous love
has no beginning
and no possible ending.
The crimson of this blood
will eventually run clear
without the sacrifice of one more child
in this kingdom of grey forgetfulness.

Perhaps it will be here,
in this place of calm abiding,
we will remember
the color of love.