Today we begin a week of poetry. Join us in welcoming poet Alana Rodrigues.

by Emily Sorensen

by Alana Rodrigues

Color as Language
      After Etel Adnan

The painting is still wet,
like waves reaching dry sand.
The sun, not always yellow gold, but
bright blue, red-orange, pale purple, tucked
in the shadow of a mountain, square-shaped
on a canvas, a light translated
into words Adnan says in color language or
sun language.
A language I want to speak
and breathe in. Like fern green makes me think
of the Tasmanian trees, lush forests,
my grandmother’s necklace.
The way violet shapes wisterias
draping over trellises,
lilac haze in the wood washed out
by the rain.
The way color can form
words in its own language,
a memory pinned
to the body that will never go away.
The way I think of a royal blue ocean when I hear
Adnan’s words: The waters will remember that once
they were you.

(Learn about the artist Etel Adnan here and more here.)

About the photographer: Emily Sorensen is an environmental educator and a DFA Candidate researching ecological art and performance at the Yale School of Drama, where she earned an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism. She likes to go outside and take pictures of trees @emily.sorensen.