Colorlessness, by Amy Gerstler

Eventually, we all lose the perfumed,

bejeweled world, beyond which lies

silent anarchy. The yellow of burnt grass

evaporates like fumes. Poof! The green

of leeks is gone. You’re robbed of the rich

ripe browns of feces, the ringing inner

pink of grilled beef. The watery gray

of writing and drawing ink fades away

too. Clear-seer, observer of matter’s

never-ending attempt to reduce or augment

itself into just light, does color’s flight

prefigure your coming nothingness: mud to flesh

to thin air, or will some tendril at last

burst from you: saffron, black, or earwax

orange, to scare the pants off both atheists

and verse mongers--a spindly rebellion

germinated for ages, not in follicle or marrow,

but in that maypole of our emotions: fear,

whose multicolored ribbons flutter

and flutter like nerves branching

from a backbone--they twitch and sting

but can never be grasped. Throughout

the pervasive gray of disgrace, the purple

of complaint, despite your alternating caresses

and attempts to shrug me off, I swear

by the reek of the dung heap, by the slip

and slide of white silk, by the feelings

you stupidly unleashed in me, I will never

lose you completely in the gathering tide

of colorlessness, due to love’s stubborn tint.

From “Crown of Weeds” by Amy Gerstler (Penguin: 92 pp., $14.95)