White Cloud Over Purple

7:00 AM

Mark Rothko, White Cloud Over Purple, 1957

By ROSIE PASQUALINI

I stand stranded on a canvas cold core churning, sides aglow

overhead the white sky dances while a redness roils below

I had spent ten lifetimes fighting for the love of rugged eyes

and the mouths that spouted —purple!— ‘twas my name, as I surmised.

I hung fast within the vastness, knowing nowhere could surpass

This sweet world where walls were windows, and truth trembled through the glass.

But my skin grew thin from coveting a fate I failed to see;

Though surrounded by my siblings, I knew not what lived in me.

Then, one sorry Sunday morning, when no painted faces paid,

And the house of hues grew humble, and no footsteps ricocheted

Off the dusty marble sea then I languished then I screamed:

“Who is purple? What am I? Have I distilled my silhouette

for the irises of pupils who look through me and forget?

What a scornful predilection! Can’t I catch a single hint

of my bare reflection, unadorned by someone else’s tint?”

I stood stranded on a canvas hot core burning, sides aglow

when I felt the white sky dancing as the redness roiled below

so I spun about in wonder— I was them, and they were me

tugging one way, then the other in discordant harmony.

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