Woman Who Danced with Rainbows

By Terra Wolfe

There was a woman who danced with rainbows

There was a man who was a black and white TV.

 

The woman painted her dreams

                        in moving colors

                                                and gave them away

                                                                        to keep them.

            Nothing

 

            seemed impossible.

 

                                                She understood

                                                the flowing of light.

                        Rainbow

 

                        taught the woman to move

 

                        and made her free.

 

 

The man who was a black and white TV

looked at her rainbow clothes

and her rainbow hair

and his vertical hold let go.

 

The woman saw

                       

                        his contrasts and cadences

 

                                                                     they interested her.

 

She liked

              the shapes

                             of  his light

                                               starkly reassuring.

 

 

“That brightness could give substance to my colors,

how much we could paint together.” she sang.

 

 

Then she danced to the tune

until the rainbow

wrapped around her

like a sari.

 

                        She gave a bouquet of her favorite colors

                        to the man who was a black and white TV.

 

He seemed pleased

and turned up his volume.

 

He looked for a place to put them.

But there was no place in his paradigm

for colors.

 

So he turned up his volume.

 

                                                Her dance

                                                was not

                                                            so graceful now

                                                      It was harder to hear the music.

 

                        She loved the idea of him.

                        with her dreams of black and white with rainbows

                        kept her reaching for a combination of colors

                        he could understand.

 

He had no tubes or circuits for color.

They wrapped around his controls

and confused him.

 

carefully into himself

and saw no colors.

There were no colors.

                                 without colors

                                                      her dance was madness

                                                                                     her dance was alone.

 

He turned up the volume

until there was no music

                                    She couldn’t dance

                                    as the rainbow slid away

                                                                        she wondered if she existed.

“All there is,” he stated,” is light and its absence.

I see that nothing else exists.  I live by these rules

See my sensible patterns.”

 

 

 

                        The woman who danced with rainbows

                                                                              still liked his bright motion.

                        But she still saw colors,

                                                          no matter how she tried

                                                                                       to discipline her eyes.

                                                                                              There they were.

He was disgusted by her lack of perception

and turned off.

 

when the patterns stopped

and it was dark,

            she felt the edges

                                    had been pulled from the earth.

 

Those beautiful, reassuring edges.

 

                                                            She was afraid to move

 

                                                            she clung to his cabinet

 

                                                            but without the light

 

                                                            the cold burned her skin.

 

She slid away

and held very still

for a long time.

 

                        Faintly

 

                        slowly

 

                                    from the silence

 

                                                            there was music

 

                                                                                    colors flickered

 

                                                                                                            rainbow invitation.

Carefully, uncertain, testing

                                    she began to move

                                                            the world seemed strange

                                                                                                without edges.

She is dancing again

                                    with rainbows.

 

                        she paints

                        with more intricacy,

                        searches

                        her own edges.

                                                             The woman who dances with rainbows

                                                                     doesn’t give as much away now.

Though her dreams

have more form

                        and the gifts have more value.

                        she seldom keeps them now

                                                                        after she gives them away.

 

                                                Still,

                                                            she can

                                                                        dance.

Copyright Terra Wolfe 2006

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