I Wear the Sky

What color do you wear?

I wear the sky

In all its brilliant hues

And tender shades

Every aspect

Of its chameleonic nature

Stitched into the fabric of my being

I wear the quiet solitude of its golden morning

From which springs the verdant inspiration

That heralds the day

A clear azure and glassy free will

That directs my way

And extends to me a path

That is never least

But is un-tempered resistance

For what good comes from what is easy?

I wear the fury of the afternoon storm

Rumbling with a grey intensity

The type that sends

A sideways gunmetal rain

And bolts of electric pearl

From its occasionally clouded emotion

Always raging with a windswept passion

And condensed concern

I wear the calm of it’s resulting promise

It’s arc of purple pride

That streaks across the vision

In countless colors

Without apology or affront

But with a multi-faceted self-assuredness

That embraces every pigmented creed

As an important fraction of an equal whole

I wear the reflection of its sunset

The resolve that

With a gentle and sometimes wavering hand

Assembles the broken, scattered pieces of the storm

And arranges them in a vibrant, fresh mosaic of rosy orange

That pierces the clouds with rays of fiery clarity

Who knows what colors will dot my palette

In days to come

In years

In that final midnight

Humbling in its diamond vastness

The totality of experience

Absorbed from every corner

Of a life that, with hope,

Will have been lived in every tone from earth to sun

A mixture of all that is

Both sorrowful and brimmed with joy

Both frightened and ready

For what will come.

For what is black

But a transcendent realization

Of all that has been

Of all that is

And of all that will be?