( A metamerism is a colormetric phenomenon where two colors made up of different spectral components appear the same to the human eye)
You could measure out the color of days
and value them by spectral hue.
You could say that brightness dimmed,
and radiance lost its glow.
But I knew a spunky girl,
whose shriek could shatter rocks.
I stood in awe of the prescient way
you were there to save us from ourselves.
As when you stole a monkey boy
from a fourth story window sill
and Captain Collins called you hero from below,
a child still wholly in my view
in brilliant shades of normalcy.
I wish I could be that guardian for you,
in your winning strategy entwined,
a prism bent image
through crystal troubles all my own
forever worried, forever ill
lightly bent with my excuses
and denials
of a breakdown years ago.
I see you sister, here,
in this day where
new green crowns Live Oaks
and Dogwoods whisper white,
and rhodamine blesses Red Buds,
as finely as any spring I've seen.
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Comments: 29
The glorious releasing of the natural phenomenon--the metamerism--at poem´s end, feels for all the world like a redemptive benediction.
This is a marvel of a poem. I so agree with my friend Andrea.
Blessings and best wishes - S.
side note: Andrea, I'm so pleased that you know something of the printer's world and offset lithography. I rarely go into depth because so few people know just how complex it really is, or maybe would want to. - I love color. :-)
Svetlana, Thank you so very much for your kind comment.
We don't often meet that much anymore, on the pages of gather, but it's poems like this one that remind me why we are connected. Very nicely done. Would you consider posting this to my new group, Artistic License?
You wove a lovely poem.
I love that word too JustMe.
Thanks so much for the feature Ron.
up many spaces this day for me. In a way I read it as love-elegy. A summing-up. It is the many splendors of spring in magenta.
Carolion, It is always a joy to receive your thoughtful and "spirited" comments.
libramoon, it is. thank you so much for the visit and the kind words.
Thank you Kelly, I appreciate your comment.
I like the way this poem introduces itself, and then gets personal. I wonder if the interjection at the beginning of line five is not extraneous? Great poem. The metamerics of light, optics?, and visual perception beg, in my mind, an investigation into a similar set of relationships between letters, words, meanings and perception of symbols. Hmm...
Yes, I love Barnett Newman. There were several minimalist “Color Field” painters of the modernist era that played with these subtleties of color. Although I am a painter myself, actually, my livelihood is printing. The term "metamerism" has a couple of different meanings, only one having to do with color. A metamerism in the perceptual or colormetric sense basically means that you may have two different colors but the light source you view them under may cancel out some of the visual spectral components of one color making the two appear the same to the human eye. “Cancel Out” meaning the additive effect of the color of the light source may push aspects that make one color different from another out of the perceivable human color gamut. Higher end printers measure color by spectrophotometry using what is called L.a.b. values where the “L” axis represents brightness perpendicular to the "a" ana "b" axis. The “a” and “b” represent two dimensions of a plane that looks something like the old color wheel that you know. This system measures color in a 3 dimensional “color space”. Every color both visible and not visible can be mapped onto a grid like this. The scope of colors that exist in nature has a wider gamut than is visible to the human eye, so there are colors that have L.A.B. coordinates which we cannot see. Printers and other graphic artists generally use a very standardized spectrum of light across the industry to view color. It is a frequent occurrence to us that when we move a proof and a press sheet out of one source of light where they have a very close match to another different light source, we find that they no longer match. There is a lot more to this but it is pretty technical and I run the risk of boring you to tears. In my poem I was using it as a metaphor for the commonality I have with my sister, though our lives have taken divergent paths. Metamerism in this poem roughly stands for the context that I choose to see her in. Thanks for the great comment! As for line 5? I’ll have to think about it. I wanted a significant contrast to the first four lines. You may be right though. This one may be headed for a re-write somewhere down the line. But for now, I’m happy with it.
I figured the interjection was a way of putting the punch on the change of direction. It works that way, but is unnecessary, to my mind, because line five is so strongly written and the feeling and the image are also very strong. A weak word like but just seems out of place to me.
But it is your poem, and a very good one. Thanks for sharing your feelings and your expertise. I look forward to more.