Colour is Life

For Stanley Solomon (1947-2021)

Colour is life.

You need only the confirmation

of startling red seeping

from a finger

caressed by the serrated edge

of a brand new blade left in the sink

sticking up between the dishes - a knife

that moments before was in your hand

carving the pulpy flesh of a tomato

into thin wedges

for your lover’s kale salad:

The gash shocks and excites,

as if time itself was sliced open

from the loose sack of routine,

the heart-pump speeds, pulse flutters

and the frantic search is on

for a tourniquet to stem the oozing colour.

And not 24 hours before the same hand

held a pale cardboard box,

‘A bit heavy’ the man said, smiling,

presenting it like a gift to be wrapped.

The familiar name was laser printed in black ink

above a cremation ID (his last official number)

evoking the Holocaust

(it's no wonder we Jews typically don’t do this).

Summoning remnants of courage

I inspected the contents;

not all of him was incinerated,

granular bits of dry bone were visible

through the clear cellophane,

reminding me of shards of broken pottery

from a lost civilization

sifted by wind to the surface

of a sun-bleached biblical desert.

And now his kin

are turned archaeologists

deciphering who he really was

and asking why he didn’t care enough,

or like children trying to colour 

between the lines,

making up a story.