Color

Color

Space is not
empty but folded
back upon itself,
barren distance is
hued and dyed, and
in the desert,
all things coalesce.
Charles Manson found his
true color there,
hiding in the
palette of long
shadows
late one afternoon in
Death Valley,
while Jim Morrison
lost his balance seeking a
new path in the savage brightness
of the desert,
as the shaman’s haunting vision
eluded him and
drifted away with the
winds like secret
mantras spun from a
Tibetan prayer wheel 
until the lost
Om Mani Padme Hum
revealed itself
anew, and the
color
of compassion made the desert
whole
once again, and so was
I.

(this poem appeared in the Wilderness House Literary Review volume 4/4, December 2009)