Words To See By

The poet wrote The wine-dark sea

because he had no word for blue

and so Odysseus piloted the Argos

across the sunless, invisible Aegean waves.

Honey gleamed green without

the concept of yellow in those long-past

Homerian years. Scholars note

the human eye

can’t detect a hue for which

the mind has no word.

Red-green, blue-yellow,

the real colors that we cannot see,

shimmer beyond our understanding,

shades waiting to be held

in the imagination, acknowledged.

If I am a color, my mind, my heart—

or the enormous hidden mystery of you—

who would have a lexicon large enough

to bear witness?