As he walked,
he thought of cobalt blue,
And the many acquaintences
who knew it by name
And admired or even
loved it.
He thought about their isolation
in this affection,
Their membership in a group
that never meets,
Diffuse and unknown
even to their own selves,
Secretly united only by
joy of observation,
Who regale it
in their vases and walls,
In the folds of curtains,
feathers of a forgotten bird,
At dusk the edges
of distant mountains.
Some are illuminati who know
the truth of the hue,
That, absent cobalt blue,
only vacuum would exist,
With occasional photons
or other-ons
Racing from each other
at the speed of light
In the slow entropic-death
of a cobalt-blueless universe.
He realized the planter beneath
the garden wall
Asserts his existence,
that all is here and real,
That he can stop holding his breath
and breathe once again,
That the race is slow,
and oblivion infinitely distant.
— Cobalt blue is both a color and a substance
(cobalt aluminum oxide — CoAl2O4). The
nature of our universe predicates the existence
of cobalt, aluminum, and oxygen.
Bluster & Absurdity 