Red: The color amaryllis blooms turn when they crumple in on themselves after a week-long fantasy display of peachy pink in your south-facing bay window. The amaryllis bulbs you’d left for dead from last year--stuck under an entry table near a heat vent which seems to have done the hibernation trick. Buds poked up late March and, with water, the exhilarated flower stalks grew two inches a day heading for the ceiling! Red begins decay and yet you’re thankful for it.
White: The color of apricot blossoms under April snow. Who can say which is better? Who can tell them apart?
Blue: The refracted valley light at base of Little Cottonwood Canyon when you’ve just pushed off the Albion chairlift and your goggles haven’t fogged. It’s an inky blue unexplained by weather patterns or the elevation or descent of moods. It’s what you’ve left behind. It is congestion. Three hundred twenty-five thousand minds can disbelieve they impact the earth at all and you know in that distant ink-dark blue floats three hundred twenty-five thousand pounds of wrong. Spring snow is heavy but forgiving. It slows you down so that you see red, white, and blue.
