"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
For this exercise, let's play with colors. Observing patterns and how colors interlay can help us train our focus and flexibility.
Look around you and find a pair of colors - any two colors will do. It could be just that you spotted yellow-green pattern on your blanket or the book near you have black-white cover. It doesn't matter. Look in that contrast and then close your eyes. Write about what you 'see', what you feel. How does it appeal to you? Let it inspire your writing and focus on pictures coming to your mind.
Colors passing through us (an excerpt)
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.
Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
Marge Piercy