What is blue?
And is whatever it is the same for me as it is for you?

A scientist might state that blue describes:
'colours perceived by humans observing light with a dominant wavelength between approximately four-hundred-and-fifty and four-hundred-and-ninety-five nanometres',
Which may well tell us how blue can arise -
In the human mind, when a certain type of electromagnetic radiation enters the eyes.
But this does not, I think, tell us what blue really is.
For how can we be sure
That the imagined colour that my mind selects in its constant rush
To paint upon its ever-changing canvas
Comes from the same small pan into which you dipped your own brush.

You can say that blue is the colour of the sky (by day at least),
Or of the vast expanse of open sea (mostly),
Or the shirt worn by the best team (certainly not).
But what if you see all of those as I see green?
(and then we agree - those shirts belong to by far the greatest team the world has ever seen).

So what is blue?
To me, or to you?

To complicate matters further...
Blue could refer not to colour but, rather, to the tone of my thoughts.
But if I tell you that, just now, the thoughts inside my head are blue,
How do you know whether I am simply feeling a little down on my luck,
Or whether my mind, unleashed, is filled with images of a naked couple
?       
Again, we come unstuck.

We must agree then, I think, to put aside all ambiguities
And to take the definition, with all of its nanometres, at face value.
Then we can label the sky as blue and the sea as blue.
We can assume my mood is melancholy even it is really full of sauce.
And we can move on.
(although, we will never agree about those shirts of course.)

(c) Tim O’Hare, September 2023

---

About this poem: I’m not entirely sure where the idea for this poem came from but I guess I just liked playing with the words and the rhymes and bringing together some some threads from different aspects of my life – science, perception, atmosphere, ocean, sports.