A New Color

Originally posted on 10/28/12.

How to explain
a new color?
How to define it
beyond calling it
a crisp, refractive purple
only visible
behind my eyes?

I sit in my car
in my driveway
thinking of the two women
panhandling in the rain
at the end of our street
at the start
of a hurricane.

How to explain this color
I know I have never seen before?

When I asked them
if they had a place to go,
one smiled and the other said,
“Thank you, bless you sir.”

I’m sitting in the driveway
looking at a color
with closed eyes,

with my head on the steering wheel.

A color I’ve never seen,
a clear and crisp refractive purple
in the crazed, urgent, irregular form
of a paper flower
or a crumbling gem.

This is the color
of a blessing or a mercy,

the color of
driving back down the hill
to take them to a shelter,
the color of shame
when they refuse
to get in my car,
the color of understanding
why
they refuse,
the color
of praying
for them,
the color
of feeling
that I have not given
enough,
ever, to them,
maybe to anyone.