Joan White
Why the World is So Blue
There is no blue sky. Or ocean. No blue
morpho butterfly.
Just a creature colluding with light.
Not even bluejays.
Hold a feather up to the sun--
the blue disappears.
In this world there are no perfect circles.
At their circumference lies impermanence--
particles, cells, atoms in constant motion.
Centrifugal force causes a bulge
at the Earth’s equator. Saturn’s moons.
Certainly, the orb drawn on a blackboard
falls short. NASA’s quartz gyroscopic rotors,
the most precise man-made spheres ever,
less than three ten-millionths of an inch from ideal.
In this world we seek permanence.
Our disappointment like the blue water
rippling outward from a pebble tossed in a lake--
almost perfect.
Joan White lives in Vermont, where she raises funds for a nonprofit that supports people in poverty. Her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Journal of American Poetry, Forage, NPR’s On Being blog, among others.
Why the World is So Blue
There is no blue sky. Or ocean. No blue
morpho butterfly.
Just a creature colluding with light.
Not even bluejays.
Hold a feather up to the sun--
the blue disappears.
In this world there are no perfect circles.
At their circumference lies impermanence--
particles, cells, atoms in constant motion.
Centrifugal force causes a bulge
at the Earth’s equator. Saturn’s moons.
Certainly, the orb drawn on a blackboard
falls short. NASA’s quartz gyroscopic rotors,
the most precise man-made spheres ever,
less than three ten-millionths of an inch from ideal.
In this world we seek permanence.
Our disappointment like the blue water
rippling outward from a pebble tossed in a lake--
almost perfect.
Joan White lives in Vermont, where she raises funds for a nonprofit that supports people in poverty. Her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Journal of American Poetry, Forage, NPR’s On Being blog, among others.