The Face I Paint is Green

A Mandala Meditation in Ventura

-- Caren Rich

After the final bell fades

Through the bones of the middle school walls,

And the chalk ghosts of algebra

Still float in the air,

I drive to the mission

To kneel at the feet of color.

Here, on the street,

We paint what cannot be spoken

A mandala stitched into the ground

With sun rays, prayers,

And a green-faced dream

No witness can erase.

The face I paint is green.

Not rebellion, not error

But chlorophyll, rebirth,

The hush of eucalyptus after rain.

It is the way breath feels

When you’re finally allowed to rest.

I study the mandala twice,

As if green is too much joy for a face.

But I am tired from teaching,

And alive in the stillness

Of this unexpected altar.

Children dip brushes

into sky and fire,

elders bend

Like parenthesis over the past,

shading in stars,

a black cat with poppies,

a blue deer mid-transformation.

We make of the street

a cathedral,

where no one needs permission

to pray with their hands.

Some tell children

to paint within the lines.

I tell you now

some rules don’t fit the curriculum.

Some joy only rises

when feet are stained with pigment

And the sun watches from the center

of a spiral the city cannot pave over.

We turn asphalt into altar.

We remember

this is how community begins.

And somewhere behind it all

not ahead, not above,

but within

Is the silence

of someone who dreams in circles.

She maps with instinct,

draws from the marrow of the land,

knows that mandala is a kind of prayer,

and color is a kind of language

for what we cannot say.

She does not rush.

She waits for the images,

the way light filters through leaves

that aren’t trying to be anything else.

There is no wrong.

Only connection.

Only the wheel turning

us back toward wonder.

Somewhere a child whispers,

“I think the road is dreaming.”

And we believe her.