Kaleidoscope realities

I often wonder

How differently we see

What we both call green

-

You hand me a page

And I search for an answer

somewhere in between

submerged realities and

suspended belief

-

All the colours and shapes

You're drawn to put on the page

I don't think I'd have placed

A single thing the same

-

My older brother told me

The sky's not really blue

-

'A trick of the light' he said

with the kind of self righteousness

of an eleven year old talking to someone

who's still a month off seven

-

I asked him if all tricks of the light

Come out in blue, and if all blues

Aren't really blue but just yellows

Or pinks trying to trick you

-

He said I didn't 'get' it

-

Nineteen years later

I still don't often get

A lot of the things

my brother says

-

But right now it's just

Me and you

And I see blue

And you tell me

You see it too

-

~~~

-

What's inside

a kaleidoscope?

-

Why

when you look twice

is it never the same?

-

All that colour

I wonder if

it even exists

or if it's all just

light

-

~~~

-

I read this poem to my sibling

Who whether they're nine, thirteen

or Twenty-five

Will always just be

Younger than me

and they tell me

actually

light and colour

is all just

electromagnetic waves

-

I tell them

actually

they should go write their own poem

-

~~~

-

If I'd have written this poem tomorrow

The words would be all different,

the order around the other way.

I'd have forgotten some words,

and remembered others.

But none of that matters

because I'm writing it now

and the lights hitting how it hits

playing the tricks it wants to play

and when you read it, it will still be now

but 'now' will be all different

-

~~~

-

Now.

-

Now I look at your page.

I look; I really look!

I question and imagine

I ask and you answer

And I realise your words

Are just like the page

-

Somewhere between

All my looking

All my questions

All your answers

Reflections, hues

electromagnetic waves

and tricks of the light

All start to take shape

-

Submerged

Suspended

Subverted

From you

To me

-

You ask me what it is

So I say a bridge

-

Colour spills out

In a jingle of your sound

'Where the hell do you see a bridge on this page?'

-

I find it hard to explain

After all, you built it

So I pick up my own pen

And I get a blank page

And I build my own bridge

With words and scribbles and edits that wind up all over the place

But that's ok

-

Maybe you'll get it,

maybe you won't.

-

I kinda think all of this

'getting it' business

is just a trick of the light anyway