Somewhere, she’s learned

that color is not color. The red flower,
she tells me, absorbs all light 
but red, so reflects red 
where she and I can see it.

Daughter, I call her, Pulse
of Light, Prism of Many Faces I Know, 
so many I don’t. 
You are Particular, Wave 
of the one, deep 
ocean. And she absorbs it all,

except daughter— which reflects back 
to my eye, radiant and factual 
as any prayer, named 
for the very thing it cannot hold.