Passion's Color
Examine your surroundings,
most importantly their hue,
for I recall a day when setting sun
hung in the fire of a neon sky
and blazed an orange red.
What imperceptible thread held it
there above our heads like a paradigm of passion
suspended for all time!
Even now, years later,
I draw that moment out and bask in it again. . .
and over again. Also I remember how
that serpent came from nowhere
and slithered terra cotta in the sand around our feet.
I believe he was exponential (in a Biblical sense)
of what we soon would lose - our innocence -
as afternoon slipped into an iridescent dusk.
The colors of that dusk
bursting and sizzling like our steamy summer love,
primarily in nuances of lust,
flowed scarlet over us in the color of a crimson
which was cardinal as sin.
Then to the screams of gulls and to the crash of waves,
I writhed beneath a surge of heat
and his face. . . that glowed with desire.
Only at the beach was I ever to know
such splendor. . . there with my first love
and there with the sun, where it burned out.
posted 7/10/15
Written many years ago before its posted date, this was a struggle for me because I was not a free verse writer at that time. It was also a challenge poem for which those taking the challenge needed to incorporate ten given words!
For Gregory Barden's 'Strength Thru Adversity' Poetry Contest
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