Say He Saved Blue

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

after Spencer Finch’s “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning”

 

Say the unerased.
Say the unimaginable stilled.
Say that blue is a new color as if it could stay.
Say rows and rows of thousands of shades.
Say they are placeholders for what has no words.
Say the unforgotten.
Say the slate I carve is a stone tablet.
Say I press ink into paper.
Say the only thing I know is touch.
Say I am animal with tools.
Say terracotta pots are gardens.
Say apple. Say pomegranate.
Say blue over & over & it will.
Say blossom and leaf to the wolf
of dust & smoke & remains.

Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019) with another book forthcoming in 2023. Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and a Pushcart Prize. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com