Magenta Moon

 

Musing on a Magenta Moon

 

by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

 

 

The sixth grade was the first time my classmates and I had an art teacher.  I was delighted to have an official art class taught by a traveling art teacher even though the class met in the grade school’s basement hallway and was only once a week–or, possibly, once every two weeks during the 1961-1962 school year.  Having previously been an owner of a Prang set of water colors with the traditional basic eight colors on the metal, rectangular palette, my creative soul was delighted to learn that from the white-and-silver-haired teacher, we students could purchase an additional little rectangle of a new and different paint color.  One of the highlights of my sixth-grade year was purchasing the magenta paint for my Prang set.  I so enjoyed looking at the magenta block of paint that I did not want to use the magical tiny tin for a long time.  I discovered that inside the tin was the beautiful color of lighter magenta that the solid block would create when diluted with water.

 

For decades, I have not painted with water colors, acrylics, oils, nor the house variety; nevertheless, I continue to paint with words.  One word that periodically flies onto my writing is “magenta.”  When “magenta” does land in a poem or story of mine, I happily remember my first art class at Universal Grade School–the school to where all Blanford (Indiana) students of Jacksonville Grade School were transferred for one year before the new Van Duyn Elementary School was completed at the location of a former farm field near Centenary, in the late summer of 1962.

 

In either the 1970s or the very early 1980s (when I still had usable vision), I handwrote in bold, large cursive script a lengthy poem entitled “Magenta Moon.”  Since that long, handwritten poem is currently lost to me–except for two lines which still dance in my memory–I  wrote another poem entitled “Magenta Moon” this week; however, this recent poem which includes the two remembered lines is quite short.

 

 

Magenta Moon

 

Magenta Moon, on violet night,

see the darkness in my sight;

leave me in a pale shade of loneliness,

so I can write

the magenta, maroon, mangled,

mischievous, manicured, and melodious words–

worthy of basking in your light–

oh, rare Magenta Moon.

 

 

Enjoy the summer moons and moonlight!

Alice

 

July 25, 2014, Friday (for posting on July 26, 2014)

 

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