I do this activity with kids where they choose three colored pencils blind and then we take them outside on a slow walk and then a journaling spot to find where the colors are. Today I did the activity too.
Examining my colors, the blue not quite cobalt sends me squinting to the sky. Where in the depths of light trapped by that dome is this exact hue?
When I hold the pencil up to it, the sky is at once within my grasp and an unreachable horizon extending away from the sharpened tip, blending into now, my phone case... the refuse of an old newspaper's print.
Indigo, Inego, An Ego
A royal purple filled with pride. Ancient garments worth so much in their day for finding a way to dye cloth this color. It's at my fingertips, the fuzzy floral petals' veins brushed through...undersides of petals
undersides of rose petals, pink
rose quartz is too easy an answer. It must be in the pinks of my own flesh. Live tissues healthy with nourishing fluids and blood. Pink, pink like cartoon babies' cheeks or the cheeks of the real-life translucent newborn voles we found from a downed birdhouse yesterday. Rotted wood, plus boggy earthen adventures among neighborhood kids searching for frogs, equals 1 downed birdhouse. And even the neighborhood's meanest kid turns nurturing for a few fleeting moments warming the furless flesh of translucent new life squirming desperately in tiny palms.
We warn them the babies will likely die. They were just born, I think. I think of them eating up my yard and garden. There are so many of them. But...
Birth, a set of opportunities arising from nothing, does not beget the promise of survival even when our own young defend the idea of ubiquitous vole potential, exclaiming "But they don't deserve to die."
Maybe the mother returned
maybe she moved the nest
maybe their pink refreshed the flesh of another animal
maybe they are alive
After all, in spring-filled possibility, what new birth does deserve to die?
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