Color Wheel

It is a photograph of things missing.
Color in particular. No blue skies.
No oceans or trees with their respective hues.
Shades of grey and black and nothing more.

Never mind that you did nothing to the image.
No software manipulation. No tweaking.
The greyness is natural. Real. A mix
of clouds and late light, layers of grey.

You remember the day. It was warm.
There was a heaviness in the air.
It felt like storms but none would come.
A slow breeze did nothing to relieve the weight.

You remember the day. No one on the beach.
A rare moment of loneliness, a sense of love
too far away to feel, a memory,
like color in the moment. A thing of the past.

A thing of the past. And perhaps of the future.
Certainly of the future. You are old enough to know that now.
Nothing stays forever. Light. Dark. Love. Brokeness.
It all ebbs and flows. Comes and goes.

You remember the day. It was the second day of greyness
and you had only one more to spend walking beaches.
Perhaps, you remember thinking, this is all there is
this time. Your sighs were lost in the sound of waves.

The half-hearted waves. They too were grey,
the deep blue leeched out of them. Grey but
not angry or dramatic, going through the motions,
almost, but not quite, photogenic.

Once, you wished you could see the future,
wished you could see the color that eluded you
in the moments, and the longer than moments
that have so often punctuated your life.

You do not feel that way today. Age has taught you
a new kind of certainty, that weather and love are ever changing,
that color always returns, and generally
in the most unexpected way.

About this poem

Life, love and faith. They run in cycles. Life, love and faith. If you believe and live in expectation, somehow they always return. And never the way you hope or plan.

The picture was taken in Welfleet, Mass. On Cape Cod.

Tom