Had I been born to life bereft of sight
and left to discern colors through my touch,
I might have deemed a sunbeam's feeling 'white',
and never loved the darkness quite so much.
But, seeing, I know warmth for what it holds,
and white, to me, seems cool and strangely bare,
for black and gray are shades of dying coals,
and at the poles, there's too much whiteness there.
And yet I choose to think of you in white,
while I, in darker tones, sit by and burn
with porchlight moths, perusing blindest night,
and pray for grayer days I'll never earn.
  Each thought of you is scorched to pure; don't fear--
  dying beneath my breast, they cannot smear.