All the colors of the rainbow

WINNER: BY CHRISTINE GRIFFIN

Crimson Lake

Two weeks before the world turned black
and all colour drained away
to a bleached-bones underworld,
my brother and I sat painting.
Our kitchen table scintillated
in the winter gloom,
humming with cobalt blue,
burnt sienna, viridian, yellow ochre,
flooding the room with rainbows.

Laughing at his wild creation,
he painted a jungle, prowling with beasts,
hissing with harlequin snakes,
knotted with creeper
full of flaming, peering eyes.
Mine was a house – pink, soft green,
with ramrod flowers, stripy bees
two children dressed for summer,
a doll’s tea party in the garden.

Months afterwards I found his painting
transformed into a silent, lifeless world.
I dipped, dipped
into the pot of crimson lake,
daubed his jungle with blood-red streams.

hen this competition was set, the challenge was to ‘write the rainbow’. The rainbow is, however, dull compared with the explosions of colour that