Each color is a wave, a language, the totality of them—the ever-

            rising and falling bariolage of tongues—is an ocean.

 

And what’s there but to swim—propel the body through

            the reticent waters of teal, the chanting of chartreuse,

 

the prattle of purple and the professions of saffron,

            the vesper of the burning sunset and the midnight moan.

 

Swim that communion of color and thousandword,

            where you end and I begin in an ever-shifting ripple.

 

Color inscribes itself. It’s like this: we made blue love

            on a blue bed to a blue song in a roomful of blue.

 

And beyond the swaying bluegrass bloomed a blue cloud.

            The sea holly spiked and the muscadine swelled into speech.  

 

The Red Sea and the Black Sea folded into themselves, one blue

            wave into another. The sea willed the blue, so much blue:

 

mouthfuls of mussels, heartblue seabirds, the ransom of rain.

            Roadside chicory rayed a fiesta of blue petals and the unbent irises

 

stuck their blue tongues out and harmonized: azul, modrý, goluboy,

            γαλάζιο, σκούρο μπλε. Even the limestone turned blue.

 

And tomorrow, under the sky full of weather, we’ll dive off

            the cragged turquoise, bathe in the clear opal.