Why is the Sky Cerulean?

by Richard Allen Taylor

It’s complicated. When I was your age, we called

this color (referring to the hue of clear April air)

sky blue, but as poets aged, they longed for a new,

less ordinary blue, and called it cerulean, replacing

one cliché with another. But we always knew

sky could be something else, gray as a dirty

vacuum cleaner bag, or maybe onyx or obsidian

at midnight. At day’s end, you might see a sky streaked

with rose-colored feathers. Always pulling down shades,

we found inspiration from automobiles, whose

blues were named by marketing departments:

Aegean, Nitrous, Artic. Blue Candy Metallic

sounded nice but couldn’t displace sky blue. For more,

we found crayons labelled Pacific Blue, Denim, Wild Blue

Yonder, Robin’s Egg, Cobalt, and Cornflower.

If you’ll step into the bathroom, I’ll introduce you

to my personal suggestions for blue sky names:

Shower Curtain Blue, Damp Towel Blue and

my favorite, Shaggy Toilet Seat Cover Blue. But

none of them got enough votes. So, don’t blame me,

but that’s why the sky is cerulean.

Richard Allen Taylor is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Letters to Karen Carpenter and Other Poems (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2023). His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in Rattle, Comstock Review, and Aeolian Harp, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Taylor formerly served as review editor for The Main Street Rag and co-editor of Kakalak. After retiring from his business career, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and now resides in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.