The Archer

Yellow is the Archer’s ambrosia.

The Archer’s addiction,

Fear and breath.

Yellow like the burning centre.

Pulsating light,

Wild, careless, timeless.

A shining, immovable speck.

O torturous speck!

The colour of success.

Almost obsessive –

But too beautiful,

Too precise.

Yet the Archer is a taunted soul,

Plagued by perfection

And merit

And a need for control.

The target offers

Relief.

Five colours

But I see one.

A one shade

Two-dimension

Microcosm.

It is not perfection,

It is yellow.

A numbing alleviation –

If I feed my perfectionism into the sport,

Then perhaps I can assuage its hold on me.

But the hunt follows.

Every creature

That I have missed

Haunts me

And lurks

In my speckled mind,

My darkened dreams.

Until I am dreary

And forget.

With the breath

Before each arrow’s flight,

Relief is brought to me.

Slightly, steadily

I let it kiss my hand

Then run from me.

The human sees too many colours.

So I see one

Heavenly –

But this pride is my nemesis,

Because now I fear colour,

All colour but yellow.

Like rubbing velvet between

Calloused fingertips,

Like saline on a wound.

The arrow in the yellow

Is remedy.

Obsessed by yellow

Like the honeybee.

I now understand

Why Plath loved her beekeeping;

A remnant of sanity

In a swarm of potential pain.

The arrow holds a similar role in me –

A fire that gives my foggy mind

A pretence

To believe.

A chance at sanity.

Rendering me Olympus,

Artemis,

O holy God of the Hunt.

Ah the façade!

Hiding in my successes,

Giving myself titles

To forge my identity

And make it less fragile,

More decorated,

Less exposed.

Always told but never shown.

I never ask –

If you see the arrow in the yellow

It must mean that

The Archer does not need your assistance.

They look in praise,

But the Archer is plagued

By the pale stain

Of the inevitable pain

Of the look away

From one wrong shot –

Any colour but yellow

Is failure,

Reputation loss.

A well-hidden hubris –

Hiding in dead centre,

Plain sight.

Hiding in the colour yellow.