Poetry Friday – Black

October, 5:30 am is a very black time of day in Toronto.  It continues to feel pretty black when you’re being dragged around the block at 5:58 am by a terrier who seems to find brisk, pre-dawn air completely invigorating.

This morning, I thought of “What is Black?” from Mary O’Neill’s amazing Hailstones and Halibut Bones. 

Here is a bit:

What is Black?

Black is the night

When there isn’t a star

And you can’t tell by looking

Where you are.

Black is a pail of paving tar.

Black is jet

And things you’d like to forget.

Black is a smokestack

Black is a cat,

A leopard, a raven,

A high silk hat.

The sound of black is

“Boom! Boom! Boom!”

Echoing in

An empty room.

Black is kind –

It covers up

The run-down street,

The broken cup…

(For the rest… go find Hailstones and Halibut Bones, or look in The 20th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury ed. Jack Prelutsky).