All the Colors Of—Adam Whipple

"And I can’t help it. I keep measuring the swallowtail wings of the world by them.

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Adam Whipple is a musician, poet, and author living in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a graduate of Carson-Newman University. His essays and poetry have appeared on The Rabbit Room, in Curator Magazine, Blue Mountain Review, The Pigeon Parade Quarterly, and Analogue. His albums can be found on all major digital outlets.

All the Colors of

by Adam Whipple

There were these rocks in the sales display,
little bone fragments of denuded earth.

The term jewel surfaces in the mind
like a solid island floating on magma,
a cousin-word to the French for plaything—
these stones are cognates of frivolity.

And I can’t help it. I keep measuring
the swallowtail wings of the world by them:

flame maples like rubies,
ginkgos of gold,

brookwaters and stars
like clearest diamonds.

Synapses fawn over gunmetal clouds.
Such and such was a sapphire, and
this or that as green as jade.

But to live well seeds an upside-downness,
like blindly trailing the blind beekeeper
while he jokes and steps with confidence

over each known runnel and root
toward the insect hum that hides
what is nourishing and sweet.

It is the sighted man who knows little,
who wields metaphors in awkward reverse.
I should weight less gravely what bows first:

a rock like the tint of water,
an igneous chipping of Ozark
blue as a songbird’s cheek.

Or a pebble akin to the iris of
the girl playing one lonely game
in the war-fracked yard of her home

despite all the world has said
and continues to say—a stone
the color of holy rebellion.

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