by Tom Moore
If you tallied the words in the Bible and counted
the occurrences of red or gray, mentions
of the green fig leaves brushing her olive
skin, or the yellowish haze over the Dead Sea just
as the morning leaps to the sky, you’d find not many—
for the world of God is two-toned. No ecru or mauve,
a few purples, no color that Martha Stewart would
paint her kitchen or Dior stamp on a gown.
In the land of Khapiru
the sky’s a royal blue and
the desert a lion’s pelt.
It’s good to fear what’s in
the woods, what with its
gratuitous flaunting of
fiber, its persistence
in spite of the
woodcutters, fire,
and leopards
that sharpen their claws on bark.
This doesn’t happen in sand.
At daybreak when the wind sends
sand over our tents, the world’s
reborn, not with shades that
would change old rhythms
but with the same hues.
Five times good and once very good, says the Book.
What’s lost in a world of twos are the green
vales of youth, the cream skin of maidens
we loved, left, wished we had back.
We are driven as we drive
our flocks to the next
field and as such must
not take much with us.
What does a color weigh?
We answer it’s not in the weight
per se but in what weight implies:
Love of red would entrap
us with the liars of Edom,
purple with apostates of Jair.
And pure yellow, my God. . . if we lingered near women who
dressed in saffron and smelled their jasmine perfume and
reached out to their breasts. . . we would be done. So,
except for the blue and tan we bear no color—
our eyes always piercing the desert to
locate the tent and His hand
easing the light brown on
skins as we shimmer—
a mirage of beliefs that float
up to mountains, always up,
for air is the food of God.
Sundry works, both creative and analytical, have appeared in such journals as Literary/Theory/Interpretation, American Aesthetic, Tiferet, Rhino, St. Petersburg Review, Jeopardy, Nimrod, and College English. Tom Morre (all pronouns) teaches myth and folklore at Western Washington University.