Consider

Swanwick poem originally published in the journal La Presa under the title #87CEEB, the hexadecimal value for the thing we call “Sky Blue."

Recording an animation by Djelloul Marbrook

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You might say azure or celeste or simply blue—
and it will depend on the time of day, but
consider that it is not orange or pink, that it

scatters itself through this dreamy dome with random
reds, greens and blues, that you have a hidden memory
of the first encounter, a child gazing into

	       open space,

silent before religion and received ideas,
looking deeply at the gentle invitation,
generous without form, an unspoken message—
as clear as the air—that you belong where you are,
that the world has no slant but is slanted when you
speak it after the wordless grasp explains itself
in silence, the captured moment of the sublime.

And consider the sky-bound bird that crosses your gaze,
that you want to join it in flight until you meet the
horizon and the greenness of the grass as you sit
where you are, so sensibly bound to the earth.
         
                     —Kevin Swanwick


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A poet has a great deal to learn listening to someone else read the poet's work, and perhaps even more listening to instrumentalists responding to the poem.

I was working  today on this poem—figuring out, that is, how to handle its intonations and nuances and subtleties—in my favorite café, Verdigris, in Hudson, New York—when a tall stranger approached me, pointing to my cap. which bore the logo of the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. The stranger, David Levy, had studied with Hayden Carruth at Syracuse University, a poet I admire. and he is now deeply involved in a project called Fragile Threads of Beauty, which puts him in touch with instrumentalists around the world. We spoke about Arab flutes and the interplay of poetry and music. Verdigris is that sort of magical meeting place that draws together the creatives of the world. 

David and I spoke of Dickinson's home, which he too has visited, and her incalculable influence on poets. I mentioned the influence of the broad Connecticut River, which flows near her home, on her sensibility.

Kevin Swanwick and I had recently visited Dickinson's home, now a museum, and that's why I was wearing the cap David had noticed. So there we were in magical Verdigris, David Levy, Kevin Swanwick and Djelloul Marbrook, drawn together by "fragile threads of beauty."
                    
                       — Djelloul Marbrook