"Defining White" poem 2013

Dear Everyone:

I discovered this poet in a
magazine. Naomi Shihab Nye is
a poet, songwriter and author.
This poem is from "Words Under
the Words" (1995). Portland,
Oregon: Far Corner Books.

DEFINING WHITE

On the telephone noone knows what white is.
My husband knows, he takes pictures.
He has whole notebooks defining
how white is white, is black,
and all the grey neighbourhoods in between.

The telephone is blind.
Cream-white?Off-white?
I want a white, he says,
That is white-white,
that tends in no direction
other than itself.

Now this is getting complex.
Every white I see is tending
toward something else.
The house was white, but it is peeling.
People are none of these colours.

In the sky white sentences form and detach.
Who speaks here? What breath
scrawls itself endlessly,
white on white, without being heard?
Is wind a noun or a verb?



My interest in this poem was increased
by working with acrylic paint - and dealing
with the various pigments. One of my whites
has what seems to be pale pink in the pigment,
for instance.

Helen.