Friday Color

It’s odd, but the right bright colors feel more calming to me than many dull, tedious colors— which distress me psychologically and thus stress me.  So the colors of this Matisse make me happy and calm.

Definitions of calm are “undisturbed,” “not agitated.”  And “composed,” like my thoughts here.

Here’s a calm poem for today, though I think Google may have mistaken calm for “clam.”  What more calm than a clam, after all?

Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
 
~ Mary Oliver ~

image:  Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954): The Peonies (Les Pivoines), 1907. Painted in Collioure. Oil on canvas. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd 2012.