You think you know
the color of the sun
until you sit down
to paint it.
You reach for the yellow –
the yellow of sunflowers,
of a cliché crayon drawing you did,
a perfect lemon in the top right corner.
But your hand drifts then
to sparks on the crest of a wave,
to that glimpse of melting iridescence
in a friend’s eye-white.
Orange is the bottle you finally seize
to squeeze autumn leaves,
the setting sun over a lake,
onto your impatient palette.
But soon, all those colors
(plus a few more)
are spilled on the canvas
(plus your fingers).
You think you know
the color of the sun
until you realize
you don’t know colors at all.
Who else can validate
that your ocean is truly blue,
that your sun is the gold
you’ve always been sure of?
After all,
everything is perception,
and if you think too much about anything
it doesn’t exist at all.
So you sit down again
and this time
dip in your brush
and paint the sun
every color you own.
