Iridescent

My son is rainbow-colored, brighter than me, and I love him.

My daughters are new colors not yet named. One:

the color of an arrow in the summer sky. The other:

the hue of an unmeasured sea.

Beside them, my skin is gray, the color of ancestors,

the color of a wave that once rolled over the weeping world,

the color of sorrows I can never undo.

Your children are dawnlight, brilliant, and you love them.

Your daughters are the colors of the infinite land,

your sons are the shades of the passing seasons.

Beside them, your skin, like mine, is gray,

the color left behind after the flooded river

has carried everything else away.

Before our children wake, let us gray shadows

rework this world with our tired hands,

let us clear away the drowning mud,

renew the living earth and make everything ready,

so our children can plant new seeds,

and grow new things

that will bloom in colors we have now forgotten.