Color Guard opens the Pearly Gates

Photo credit: Heidi Gustafson/earlyfutures.com

Life’s hues alight in layers,
raw sediments of nature mixed
with veins of social pageantry.
Kids dig in this strata, smearing mud
and weaving weedy crowns,
decorating under prayer flags
dyed for backwoods theater.

Mind’s eye absorbed those tones
before flesh grew on newborn bones.
Sensed the mix of astral ochers
when Mom ground old barrow stones.
Now all pigments jig around us as
the miner’s palette blows
into the unhewn yonder.

Behold home’s holy regalia,
heaven’s earthbow — team chroma.
These robes swaddle souls in
sweeps of breath-giving glory.
Dragonfly Blue. Loon-eye Red.
Wild Salmon. Unmolested Coral.
Multitudes shine beside these few.

Other glamours enchant like city cousins,
raised in the stylish crush of imaginaires.
Revolution Raindrop Purple.
Submarine Yellow. Salient Kermit Green.
Pop signal corps can haul cool mythos.

See how sight stirs primal now,
blends ancient and mod ingredients.
Careful use shoos wendigos who
pose drab and present dangers.
Vision untricks institutes and
melts monotonous wax figures.
She makes space for diverse drumlines
of fiesta neighborhood crayons.
Herein dwells our resurrection
of cave medicine.

So bake Angel Orange
treats for convicted wizards;
serve mojo to maiden volunteers.
Help inmates hone crafts that
sway more than drunk football
crowds or plantation polls.
Do it, plus fling bold bouquets to
granny scouts; give out gallons
of floral lube and paint towns
Messiah Pink.

Onward rockhounds, on herbalists,
on beauticians and beaders.
Rally inspiration’s troupes to
free the art behind every
plant and mineral door.

Experts won’t expect this turn,
even as light beams vivid
beatitudes through cubicles and
classrooms and church salons.
Waves of complexity fit
the regulars fine, far better
than bleak-and-wyte suits.
After a spell students gaze
up from under the dryers,
forgetting about texts
from cell-block brokers
and powermarms.

You watch. As days unfold
pupils explore this light in
naked detail. Unblinkered peeps
clean banned lenses, expose
greedback trails and dreadline sins
to unlatch reparations.
Creation gleams as children
tend each canvas, blank
shame behind us. Life
co-creates her masterpiece,
rejoining us in the wonder-
works of Eden.