Or a Color

Remembering that brief moment 
when I was a child 
that I thought before the advent 
of color photography
the entire world consisted
of black and white
which made sense to my mind
since that was how the time 
was consistently rendered
and the figures you encountered
staring back at you lifeless and gray
could only ever have existed 
in that state.

Our child may never have that impression
although her favorite book remains
an accordion of black and white images
the sheer accumulation of pictures
we have taken of her if they survive 
whatever file format regression 
awaits us in the near future 
will convince her of the technicolor 
regularity of her presence even 
before consciousness coagulated 
into the knowledge of things
existing apart from their representation
how much she already recognizes 
an image in these pixels although 
to her they may only be pixels
no doubt she knows their omnipresence 
in all our lives reinforces their hues
all along this vast spectrum 
dividing the one light into
constituent parts.