Black On White
Seems black on white is not absurd
Unless to reading you’re inured.
Black softens white in photograph
Can give it depth that makes you laugh.
And Black’s shade for reflective core, (1)
When temperatures begin to soar
Black yin, white yang, design you see
And God’s plan for eternity.
While white on black is racist’s art
Inversion that can’t live in heart.
Yes, light seems death to black outlook,
Until you read God’s storybook,
What we call light (this seems absurd)
Reduced to heat, God’s final Word,
This heat the last trace of a race
To spread God’s Word through all of space.
Brian Johnston
January 25, 2015
Poet’s Notes:
(1) A ‘white’ skin is reflective of all light, a ‘black’ skin much less so, a ‘red’ skin reflects mostly red light and so on.
One of the funniest Oxymoron’s in the English language is surely the calling of people whose skin color is not white ‘Colored People.’ It is Caucasians in fact who should be called ‘Colored’ if anyone should. A black skin really is like shade itself the absence of light, the absence of color. Caucasians might most properly be called colored because white light contains all colors, not just red, orange, yellow, green, or blue.
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