Pink & Blue
Georgia O'Keeffe said, "Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words." I find that to be true in many ways. Have you ever seen a particular color in nature, and tried to describe it to someone who was not there? We invent so many words and phrases to describe specific shades of color, but none ever seem adequate to encompass all the variations of shade and tone and hue nature produces.
I can say the blossom of this Joe Pye Weed is pink—but there are so many different pinks, even in a single blossom! The berries of the silky dogwood are blue, yes. But which blue best describes them? Furthermore, they will be different types of blue at different times. Which is their true blue?
Edgar Allan Poe wrote, "For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.” Words for thoughts, yes. We think in language. But Poe also said, "There is, however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language." I suspect Poe might have agreed that colors are not thoughts, but fancies of exquisite delicacy, and even he, the master wordsmith, would not have found words for every distinct color the natural world presents to us. And I find that comforting. What a dull and drab world it would be if colors were as limited as our words.