World of Color by Kat Magendie

I awake with the colors of hovering just above my face, twisting and turning and shifting and waiting for me to pull them into myself where they mix with my blood, swift through my veins, and out they’ll come, through my fingertips, from deep inside of me, mixed with my own juices the colors are both yours and mine and the universe’s. I arise, full of color, full to the spilling point, full to the overrunning waters point, full and bloated with color, and I float to my writer’s room and spill the colors out for you to see, right onto the page I pour myself out to you.

As I write, my synapses fire off, pulse alive with energy in reds, pinks, yellows, oranges, all the colors of a blazing sunrise against an appearing blue sky, all the colors of the universe bend towards me in fractured kaleidoscopic beauty. My world in images compose the five senses—all explode about me in shattered prisms of dark and light, words drip and ooze, deep mysterious endless as a heavenly black hole where things are lost, and then hope-to-be found again by the bright intense white that rip my retinas with intensity, brilliant as any distant star flaring alive.

A meal is in front of me set on a white plate—alabaster yogurt piled high with delicate fresh raspberries and crunchy brown walnuts, along with black Deep Creek Blend coffee poured into a sea-green mug pitted with the potter’s fingerprints. I love the taste of color—round fat blueberries, strawberries bursting juice and tiny seed, crunchy peppery radishes, silky dark chocolate, sour limes, and the blackberries I pick on my mountain until my fingers are stained purple-black. I taste the colors; the shades coat my tongue and recall the hues of salty, tangy, sour, the bitter and the sweet.

I lift my head from the writing. Why, the evening is arriving! I’ve spent this day opening my veins and spilling colors. The sunset shouts into the sky, the seeming coming end, as all is fading to what is perceived as the absence of color—to black. Yet, the dark holds the colors within, as a backdrop for the swollen moon white and gray, the stars bright changling angels. In the dark, the day’s less apparent shine. But, I am ahead of myself, first the sunset amber, garnet, amethyst, coral blaze fire across the sky. The circle of life-colors, beginning with the sunrise and ending with the sunset. This is gratitude’s day; the color of life.

Here Comes the Sun by Nannette Croce

Sometimes I think I’m a cold-blooded animal like a snake or a lizard because my energy level increases proportionately to the amount of sunlight I absorb in a day. I live for the long days of late spring and summer.

This year they (as in the “they” who are constantly messing with my comfort zone) screwed me up by starting daylight savings about a month early. The bit of extra light at the end of the day seemed worthless––especially given the chilly weather––compared to the hour of sunshine I lost in the morning. One day the sun was creeping up by about 6:30. The next it was still dark at 7:00 AM.

Happily we have reached the point where man-made time is more in sync with the cosmos and the sun is rising closer to the time I do. Soon it will rise before I do and stay up past 9:00 in the evening. The days will turn warm, and this lizard will shed her rough winter skin for bare legs, gauzy skirts, and sandals.

I am thankful to know that no matter how long and dark the winter days, warmth and sunshine will always return.

Mornings by Nannette Croce

Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill.
-George Washington Carver

Morning is my time. Even as a teen when my friends were being dragged out of bed by frustrated parents, I was never one to sleep in. Not just by choice. Physically I’ve always awakened early no matter what time I go to sleep, so that makes me an early to bed person as well. In college I’d find a bed to curl up on at late-night parties, then claim to have “passed out” in order to save face. Even then, 8:00AM was a late morning, and I don’t think I’ve ever in my life slept past 9:00AM unless I was sick.

Sometimes I’d like to be a night owl, making use of the wee hours, but with no more time clocks to punch and no more kids to get off to school, morning can be as quiet and productive a time for me as late nights. I can sit down at my computer and answer all my e-mails before even going down to breakfast where I still enjoy reading a printed newspaper with my morning coffee. But it is spring and summer, when I can sip my coffee outside, that I most love my mornings. For me, no nighttime activity can begin to compare with watching the sun rise in a morning sky and trying to judge by its gradations from yellow to orange to red what weather it will bring with it . Or listening to the birds tuning up for the day, first one or two here and there, then building to a crescendo.

Of all animals, birds seem to take the most inspiration from the start of a new day and the possibilities it holds. I take my cue from them.