New Colors

All aglow
the painter's canvas greets us with a smile,
with an undeniable assurance
in its demeanor, as if to say
that its landscape will soon be
altered drastically,
colored over for the thousandth time.

Yesterday all we could see
was green & rose
sharing space. Today our painter
is bringing out the blue & gold
he was raised on:
you know,
those colors are what has always
made his life's work worthwhile
& memorable.
To tell you the truth,
pretty much every day of his life
has been spent breathing & living
those colors of blue & gold.

However, come tomorrow,
when he picks up his easel again
& decides which color scheme
is worth trying out,
it'll be cardinal. He said it himself:
cardinal is the purest color
out there & one of the most beautiful
as well, if you stop to think about it.
He told us he'd live for the day
when he painted a masterpiece
in nothing but cardinal but oh,
how striking it would be
once his work was over & done with.
To our favorite painter,
cardinal is his other favorite color
& he wears it well on his sleeve
just as much as his easel
chock full of pastel paints.

The day after that, he asks himself
silently: how about some straw yellow?
So he finds a corner of the canvas
in which he can work some of that
trademark magic of his. And yet
he still feels his work is not yet complete,
that there is still unfinished business
which needs to be taken care of
so next day he gets back to basics:
red, green, buff yellow. How can I
go wrong now? he says,
as we watch him take off once more
on a flight of creative improvisation
unlike anything we've seen before.

At the last minute, he throws splashes
of bordeaux & silver into what empty space
is left on this canvas;
then & only then, after some debating,
he feels that his work is done.

But we've always known for a fact
that his life's work is truly realized,
that his true colors are always shining
most brightly
when he's out there decked out
in the colors which he loves above all
the others:
blue, gold, & cardinal.