13 Ways of Looking at Color

It started with a memory of doing "13 Way" poems based on Wallace Stevens "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."  I thought it might be a cool culmination for my 6th grade advanced readers to do after we finish Talking Earth. (We are in a unit about survival, and the 6th grade is taking a trip to the Everglades, so I thought it would be useful for them to know about the Seminole people, since I have found any knowledge of Native Americans is severely lacking in our students.) I knew I had assigned this type of thing in the past, and I thought I had created a guide for it. That is what I went looking for in my document folder.

What I found was something I forgot all about, and haven't seen in years. It was a poem using the "13 Ways" model that was to reflect some aspect of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This was their final assignment when we studied the novel in Junior English.

I think you will recognize the name of the author. Since back then most work was submitted handwritten, I typed it out because I knew it was a keeper. I did not find any other "13 Ways" poems, nor did I find the guide I had assumed I made. But no matter. This was a gift from the past. And #9 really got to me...

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Color

By Tyler Peterson

I.

Throughout fifty unified states

lies the colored stitching

that holds it together.

2.

We see as split eyes.

Like a chameleon

viewing equal as opposite.

3.

United we change favors

as the reptile morphs colors.

4.

A man and a woman

Are human

A man and a woman of color,

remain human.

5. 

I do not know, truly, the difference.

There is beauty in black,

as there is beauty in white.

Living the same as

we do die the same.

6.

Blood flows in the veins,

one color.

Blood spills on our unified land.

Earth has no preferred taste

for blood

of either color.

A colorblind planet.

7.

Men of color

and men lacking

dream of serenity in heaven the same.

If such a place exists with color as no mention

And Earth, blind to color

why is color relevant to man?

8. 

I know the taste

Of the red and green apple.

I know, too,

The blossom of the tree that bears them,

Dreams of harmless fruit.

Then where does the green hatred

for the red

Really bloom from?

9. 

When man expires

Color is not his legacy

But the influence he had,

is in how he is remembered.

10.

At the sight of shackles

holding any man

Even in a land of purity,

Any man would cringe.

11.

A symbol traveled across the Mississippi

on a wooden raft.

Terror pierced it,

knowing of the threat

of the peace in its contrast.

12.

The river is moving.

Society’s rotating gears of segregation

are combusting.

13.

The black man is the white boy,

By basis of intellect.

We will bleed for this cause,

We will burn for this cause,

As friends float happily downstream.