Sunset poem

To the Person at the Crayola Company Who Names the Colors:

At five p.m. last Friday, fingers of light pried

apart the gray lid over the earth

until even the gray surrendered

to the pale green of an April apple-leaf.

It was that wild, outrageous shade of

red-yellow-salmon-orange-rose

         or

the belly of one of those rain forest frogs

                  or

the shoulder of a peach in mid-August,

the kind with juice sweeter than honey

                           and speaking of honey

there was that in the color, too,

         the way the light filters through nectar,

         found

                  by a million bees

                  in a billion flowers

and that color, that color, that color

alive, shot through with light,

it sliced its way through and shoved

the gray-turned-pale-green clear out to the horizon’s borders

holding all the sky’s middle, the whole thing to itself,

and it came on conquering

         banners snapping

         Hallelujah chorus blaring

         dragon breathing fire

                                    perfectly quiet

                                    perfectly still.

It was that color.