Beauty and Soul, photograph by Esteban Madonado

Doug McHargue
THE COLOR OF DOVES
after “Beauty and Soul” by Esteban Maldonado

She shocks.
She is the color of doves.
We do not remember
feathers, soft songs.
Today we are the color
of flames, burn
at everything we do.

Her flowers from other
weddings, haunting
as ghost skins, lips
like chalk scrawling
chaste on blackboards
loosed and drifting
through unnamed time.

Doug McHargue reads her poem at the June 20, 2015 Art of Poetry event. Photograph courtesy of Roger and Ginny Sanford.