Conundrums of Color

I look for colors in the rotting stump

That squirrels have brightly ignored a multitude

Of summers and long snows hardened over.

Chips, algae, moss-the ground about

A mulch of needles, leaves, a seasonal

Decay, what blurs identity at last.

In the stump, I think, to the painter's eye, glow the darks

And lights of continents, their textures in

Its pelt. The burn of passing constellations

Rests in the brown, ochre, gray, the tints

Of umber I imagine. I can believe

That the white of a jug holds a 4th of July display.

My own eye is unpainterly. It sees

Not greens but green, not blues but blue. It fails

The riddle of mixture, trips on the spraddle of tone.

It's the in-between we need gift or schooling for-

Either naming or matching, boating in

That estuary where the proportions of life

Are mixed and measured. Clouds are shocked in flame.

The stump assumes in the questioning painter's eye

A purpose timely as a diary.

What did Beethoven hear as his ink-smudged fingers

Set the notes of his opus one-eleven?

What voices later sang-from where to where-of joy?