Bonus Poem: Response piece to Kathleen Peirce's "The Many Colors"

The Paris Review sent out a lovely poem today

AND I WROTE A RESPONSE AS IF POETRY WAS A CONVERSATION

there was no such thing as mistaken happiness 
for Kathleen Peirce
Con/Jur/d, 7/6/2024

the many colors, as you put it
are not abstract, flowing through
a lost library window, on the kind of
estate only the soulfully illiterate build 

these days

And this commentary squeezes
back the riot of greens and reds, the
big flourish yellow, gold, luminescent
blue, punctuated by ugly cries, barks
of peacocks, the sad huff
of a lone lion, because that was

done then

And the colors threaten to consume
eat us whole, now is infested with
sepia, or the cold logic of black and 
white and not to put words.

And it, fails, and it’s just us after all, but they
could burst forth, swallow us right now
make us look at those pictures, lives
gone many, many years ago, and we

think then

And it is what it seems, how it
happens, the entire spectrum 
comes, even the secret shades, 

the ones

And we can’t see, 
due to biology, the lack of, 
they tell us, they’re 

there anyhow. 

And anything our living was 
will be annihilated, leaving only a smear
to show where we accelerated beyond
carbon, the limits of light and the

uncaring stars

And if we’re lucky, taking  and leaving
our moments of happiness, 

like this.

Much loverly,

Con/Jur/d, 7/6/2024