Blue Sky at Morning

Tell the anthropologists

Or linguists where you born,

And they might well be able

To tell you whether you learned

Color words for shades of blue

In the first language you knew.

In English, world’s number one

Number two language for now,

Dictionaries bloom with blues,

And novelists and poets,

Composers, pop song writers,

Entertainment spectacles,

And serious essayists

Deploy shadowy legions

Of subtly turned terms for blue.

There are books on blue and blues,

Poems on how the blue of beets

Comes and goes . . . shadow of weeds

Where beets grew. But maybe you

Grew up in one of many

Worlds without words for haint blue,

Or cerulean, royal,

Indigo, or any blue,

Just just terms for red, bright, and dark,

For instance, and then, in those

Shadows, many metaphors

Which English would call the blues.