Reston Festival, '91

To be here is to have color.
It's the Summer Color Convention. Each delegate
wears a badge: "I'm red and I'm here and
this is Little Red." "I'm yellow!"
(But unafraid.) Some, obscured,
trail balloons high overhead to announce
from afar red, blue and orangeness.

Being is color, not form: Already
these ripe restless forms begin
to leak cool violet shadows
on the brick walk, wavery columns
of color on the water (a purple one
for her blouse, one of tarnished bronze
for her hair, one woman casting
two columns as easily as one),

creating gradations of space
back to where windows gape, glazed
with distance, and beyond them green
unravels into the blue and white realm
where all the good colors go
when they've escaped form.

Dean Blehert

Last Updated: October 6, 2002