Differing Visions
Dear parent: Screening suggests that your child may have red-green color blindness.
This should not be a cause for concern.
The couch she calls maroon her son calls black.
The hot pink sweatpants that she always wears—
he says they're brown. Listen to her: she swears
now, and presses him. Her voice will crack:
Doesn't he see? The kid is five. She keeps
on drumming. There, on the carpet, that green line—
there, can he see it? Can he? It grips the spine,
climbs to the brain, the nervousness that creeps
into her voice.
The evidence is cruel
but clear enough: he'll frame things differently,
in layered undertones she doesn't share.
The pigments that he'll grind of earth's blue jewel,
the gold archangels massed for him to see—
they're his. They'll riffle through her hands like air.
This is well organized, with a Miltonic shift at the volta. I’m not sure about the italicized lines. Shouldn’t the second set be “There, on the carpet, that green line – / there, can’t you see it? Can’t you?” I’m not sure about “nervousness” in l. 8. “edginess”? How about “layered undertones she’ll never share”? I also wonder about “grind of” instead of “grind from.” At first I liked the closure, but shifting from sight to touch as the sensory locus may be a little risky.
What appear to be two short lines are in fact one broken one. Formatting didn't come through.