Saturday, March 26, 2011

Sable

Today,I completed a getting-to-know-you survey for work, on which I was asked my favorite color.

What a question! That's like asking
Andrew Zimmerman if there's anything he wouldn't eat.

Favorite color? All of them!


Today, everything is leaden like lint I pull in globs from the dryer: I will not risk my camera to snap that gray.


Instead, I return to a few days ago when the Pee-Wee-secret-word-of-the-day was SABLE -- the color of soft fur that makes you think of your mother's strokes on your hair, kisses on your fevered forehead; the color of furred warmth like black night sky that shelters and causes wonder with vast twinkling light.


Sable was sand and light and
killdeer with their neck-scarves, who stalked slowly before me, stopped to stare, stalked, stopped, stared, and finally lifted, turning and scissoring air with veed wings.


Even their calling -- a high-pitched tear tearing open the afternoon -- for me was sable, sable, sable all in the air.

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