What would I name her?
Not Elizabeth, surely.
(A venerable name,
rippling across the centuries,
but a white
name...gray...no
color
at all.)
Audrey?
Or Charlotte?
(Names the warm
color of cocoa.)
Elaine, translucent…
green as leaves
in the first days of April.
Or Karen,
the green
of avocadoes under water.
Alice?
The
rose-pink
of
a rhubarb stalk.
Alyssa, white as alyssum?
No.
My child would cry out for a purple name:
Laura, black-purple of grapes and plume;
Julie, liquid violet.
Or Margaret,
that perfect shade of light purple,
a little
darker than lilacs.
But what is she dreamed of a tawny name?
Then I would call her
Andrea.
Andrea, color of
noonday.
Color
of the vase
in
van Gogh's "Sunflowers."