I Am the Color of Life

                                                     I Am The Color of Life

                                                                      By

                                                        Ann M. Hill-Brixey

           

What does the color green mean to you?”   Does it mean naivety? Maybe it conjures up thoughts of envy. Perhaps you are thinking, environmentally friendly.  Or are you one who calls me “just green?”

When you look at me, understand that I am known by many names. Emerald, teal, grass, jade, olive, and lime, all spring to mind. But never “just green.”

Think of me, as the color of rebirth, when pale almost translucent leaves unfurl in the soft spring air. As the season progresses to the long, warm summer days, my color deepens becoming a rich forest green.  Look at how my color appears to be brushed with gold as the sun rises on those leaves, then, at sunset how a soft, rosy hue enhances me.

As an emerald, I first appear a dull, grayish green stone, when expertly cut, I glow incandescently, with a color coveted by man throughout the ages. Look at it carefully; can you see in the stone’s depths, those verdant forests of long ago, or the flashes of red and silver? Do you still call me “just green?”

I am the soft velvet shade of a gentle hillside glowing in the late afternoon sun. I can sparkle brilliantly like diamonds on a clear, cold, frosty morning.

At night under clear, star-studded skies, with the moon illuminating the sky, I am bathed with burnished silver. Am I really “ just green?”

Look at my iridescence, in the feathers of a hummingbird as it darts from blossom to blossom. Oh, how I shimmer in a peacock’s spectacular fan. Watch my waving ribbons of light as they dance across the polar sky, or peer at my colors in deep veined ice floes, moving slowly across the icy green Arctic seas.

In mythology, green is the color of Venus, as jade, I represent beauty and virtue. Songs have been written, and famous quotations have been made about me. I am even a trademark for well-known companies.

With all of this, can you still say that I am “just green?”

I am the color of life.