The Middle Path, Colorized

The usual iconography failed me. 
My mother thumb-tacked 
a cardboard print above my crib; 
my age of reason came early. 
In the print, older sister leads baby brother. 
Behind them, the angel, blond and beatific, 
wingless, through the pink of cotton candy. 
I wanted to scream: “Don’t walk over that bridge!”Angel or not—the plank is rotten, 
the support ropes frayed. I know 
rickety construction when I see it. 

To explain what is real, Buddha Shakyamuni gives
thirty-four negatives: “… his body neither existing
nor not existing, 
neither blue nor yellow, neither red nor white, 
neither crimson nor purple,…” 
That just won’t do. 
I grew up with 64 Crayolas. 

The Middle Path is not the Yellow Brick Road. 
It winds, curved as meditation, 
a worldview eschewing 
the red of blood-torture and hell-fire, 
the effrontery of Royal Purple, 
simple as a sand mandala. 

Above the path, indigo vast as mountain vistas,
hills roll plankton green as oceans, 
sky shades bald-blue as infinity. 
I can curl my toes into the golden buttered crumb
of it, release a held breath, and rest.