So much for color

A black-and-white winter snapshot
of an achromatic kind of a day,
earlier sky gathered at daybreak
like a filthy wet rag, now drearily
wringing herself out over the city,
a subdued and darkened dawning
fractured colorless and comatose
across a struggling consciousness,
as weary participants awaken and
prepare to go where one must go,
to do what one must do to survive.

Abandoned, I am left alone to drift,
barely alive, to wander like a ghost,
moving through the morning rooms
and mourning haunted, dim spaces,
the funereal glooms of dark places,
seeking out some spectral response,
some burst of brilliance instead of
all this shade, shadow and sludge,
seeking the joys of chromaticity,
the stolen light of the golden day,
and suddenly finding it on the wall.

As startling as discovering gold or
the realization that hope survives,
the rapture of a rich, red reflection
splashed in ruby-scalloped waves,
it must be the candy canes, I think,
but out the window instead I see
the ambulance across the street
painted as red as Santa’s sleigh,
red with blood-red light revolving,
taking the withered, pallid form
of poor Mrs. Hodges away.

So much for color.