Streaking across the sky
Heralding the solar descent
Soft quiet folds of smooth depth
Sheltering the precious light
Within
Where multitudes swim
And the flame burns and blazes
Deep
Deep down
In the violet-lit cavern
The rib edge shine of abalone
Floating on foam
Riding cresting waves
And dancing, drifting down
Deep down
To watery worlds warmed
By amethyst light
Aubergine ascends as darkness falls
Hands raised to the heavens
In prayer
Beckoning to stellar sisters
Lighting their wicks like
Candles on the high
Mantelpiece
Lighting a warm glow over
The landscape below
Secrets kept
Wisdom unsealed
By pulsating light—
Down,
Deep down,
The heart breathes whole
With visions revealed
In stellar cradles
Stars grow and die
In lunar turnings
The Moon breathes and sighs
Round the eye of the Sun
Gaia winds her thread—
In aubergine depths
They are all born again
Someone challenged me to ask myself, if I were a color, what color would I be, and why, and write it as a poem. So I wrote Aubergine.
Aubergine is what an eggplant is called around western Europe, and so is a deep, shiny, eggplanty purple color. The name is beautiful to say and rolls off the tongue in a delicious wave, so much more delectably than does ‘eggplant.’ While it isn’t my very favorite color, it is close, and the one I felt best represented me, which I expressed in the stanzas here. For those not familiar with the color name, I hope the clues sprinkled about, like violet and amethyst, helped reveal the shade, while also giving it extra lustre to those who were familiar.
Being a deep purple (cue ‘Smoke on the Water,’ hehe), the shade is one of layered depth inviting the viewer to plunge beneath the shiny surface of skin and smiles to view the inner workings of the soul, which is really a microcosm of the Cosmos. The violet-lit cavern is the home below, where I live. It’s not a very densely-inhabited space, so it can seem isolating and lonely at times, but it is where I am most myself, and so I cannot roam too far from where my soul-flame burns. It is also is an extra-special gift when someone else connects on this deep level, and its resonance is felt there, all the way up to the surface. Residing here feels like living and walking both at the bottom of the sea, and on the blurry edge of sky-space, which I tried to convey in this piece.
This shade is also quite dark, and reminds me of what darkness in the spiritual sense might look like with a candle’s light shone upon it. Like adding white paint to black, adding light to our lives doesn’t make the darkness disappear. Rather, I feel that a flame cast over our black night reveals its beauty hidden inside when it’s held up to the light. It was moving music, soulful singing, and poetic lyrics which did this for me, and what art can do for us all when we feel sunk and disconnected. It was also what the stars did for me, that ocean in the sky which even the most landlocked of us can swim in nightly, which helped pull me from myself and up to the larger universe of home and hearth. I never feel small when I take in the night sky; I feel a comforting part of where I truly belong, where life never ends, but cycles again and again on spectacular stellar stages. We are all star-souls working towards our own supernovular becoming.
Thank you for reading. May you live your life poetically!