Where Color Comes From

Jim LaVilla-Havelin

July 16, 2023

drought

and then

some rainstorms

this desert flower

that cactus fruit

we watched the first grow 

before we knew it -

a pod

almost breathing itself balloon big

and then one morning broke open in a starburst

a slippery tentative green flecked with burgundy

slumped on the dirt

it could have been an anemone

an organ gasping

a token for a summer of deaths and sickness

wan, translucent, speckled, scored, a star –

the wine thickening toward the deep 

unknowable center

the fruit bumped off

the top of the cactus

where

it was learning the lessons of

precariousness

fallen to the hard earth

we picked it up

brought it in the house

before bugs or boars could get it

sliced it open

to reveal a pink-purple so deep

it was a wound, a promise of sweetness

a blaze across our eyes

we did not eat

the brown grey ashen dry world of drought

lets color in

slowly

small miracles of a world without clouds

a sky the color of this new linen shirt

and sometimes

my eyes

Jim LaVilla-Havelin is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent, Tales from the Breakaway Republic, a chapbook, was published by Moonstone Press, Philadelphia, in May 2022. LaVilla-Havelin is the Coordinator for National Poetry Month in San Antonio.