Roy Jacobstein in his poem
Chartreuse
Speaks of "memories precise hue"
What is the precise hue of memory?

Is it the color I have forgotten?
Is it golden fields of yellow flowers
or the dark brown of new-turned earth?
Turning poplar leaves told us
that soon world's white diamonds would glisten
in the breath of winter silence?

Recall the depth of blue that undershades
the pines, waft of a child's breath
making frost fronds on her parka?
Precise? Memory slips
and nothing has edges.

Color rainbows
curves downward
to darkness.

Tomorrow, edges will form
crisp, clear to the horizon
a long linecuts sky from earth
marked by one dark pine against the morning sun .

This tree
stands as the poet
and I can see it
fending that light
defining
a precise hue.