Color Wheel

Streets lavender with sudden jacarandas

lavish in their deceptive beauty 

of sticky, slippery flowers

cursed and extolled at once

exploding in loud declamations

of excess, purple as prose

hard to sweep from driveways of the mind

as those distant shadows of Ukraine

artillery gray with splotches of red hemorrhaging

each day a dark and stormy night

amber waves of wheat gone to

land mines and convoys in dark white smoke

while yellow trails of missiles scissor

blue skies seen through open roofs

against a green yearning

for return to the orange havoc of spring

and the unconditional victory of grass

along with apples and artichokes bursting

their baskets and bins in all their grandeur 

in this great spinning of the wheel.