Poetry Pals - Week 7 - Colour

Hello all,

This has been a difficult one this week

Poetry Pals

. My eyes haven’t been working properly and I’m still blooming shattered after my trip out last month. Thinking about colour when your eyes don’t want to work is hard. And this was something different and it’s taken me a long time to get my head around it.

Write some noticings (a list poem, however long you like) about a colour of your choice, After Maggie Nelson. Perhaps you could you tell someone what you are working on and ask for their input? Collect your colourful fancies over the course of a week ready to be cajoled onto the page? Immediately fill your boots. Or perhaps go more abstract? Both. All of these things.

A single colour, how was that going to work? I could manage a simple list but make it into a poem! That seemed so hard. I wrote and rewrote. Scrapped it and wrote it again. It was so reticent being formed. I actually counted lines in verses, something I rarely do. 5/7/5/7 etc. and a repeating line. A lot of my poems don’t have that kind of structure. I’m all for letting the words dictate where they go rather than me manipulating them into a form. I’m not terribly good at haikus because of my resistance to structure.

---

Green

Green, green, green, give me green.  
Studio Green, from Farrow and Ball, almost black on
the living room feature wall that
deepens as the sun dips, lightens as it rises 
as the light from the expansive, south facing windows move across it.

Green, green, green, give me green. 
The adjacent wall, newly painted with a grey green that took seven tester pots to find, 
matched to the 100 year old colour discovered when peeling back the spoiled paper 
dampened and stained by splashing water from a broken drainpipe; now fixed. 
The sullying salts brushed away before applying 
The Little Greene company’s Boxington Green, ironic eh? 
Breathable paint for a now breathable wall.

Green, green, green, give me green. 
A sofa, green olive from the Vintage Sofa Company, new despite its name, 
picked deliberately to blend, long and gentle on the body, plump and sumptuous. 
A haven for a broken body. 
Plush and tactile, velvet nap sensorily soothing. 

Green, green, green, give me green. 
Plants real and pictured, one of my art works hangs on the wall, 
an unfinished piece my mother framed, 
a 2D plant to brighten my space, oil pastels on sugar paper. 
Red veins divide the lime and sage on the real prayer plant, 
streaking through the lifted leaves. 
It needs repotting I think. 

Green, green, green, give me green. 
Out of the window the long hill, that changes with the seasons, over the valley,
A soothing sight to tired eyes, old and majestic, riven with legend,
the Brontë sisters walked the top paths, if I squint I may see their ghosts,
Skirts swishing, bonnet ribbons blowing, ringlets tossing in the breeze.

Green, green, green, give me green. 
I bring the green inside for my body struggles to go outside. 
I long for the yellow-green of the first slender catkins, 
long plumes of pollen wafting into the sharp winter air. 
I long for the tiny unfurling spring-green birch tree leaves, 
a million buds dancing in the bitter wind. 

Green, green, green, give me green.
I long for the daffodil spikes and dandelion arrows. 
I long for bobbing olive hellebores welcoming the spring. 
The vibrant limes of new growth.  
The greens of the coming spring, drawing me onwards. 

Green, green, green. Give me green. 
                                                                Feb 2024

It’s not my best. But it is a poem and number 15 of the 100 I have decided to try to write this year.