I will try to describe to you the flower I saw. I measured it. It is seven point two inches tall. The light it reflects is squarely in the blue wavelength. It is slightly bent over. Because of this, the top of the flower is a little below the tops of the other flowers. The thought that this one flower would be less able to receive sunlight than it’s neighbors evokes in me a feeling of sadness. This feeling is inexplicable. The flower appears to be reasonably healthy. It should live as long and as well as any other flower.

I feel this should be enough information for you to form a mental picture. But I can tell it’s not. I can tell you want poetry and metaphors. But that is imprecise. I want to describe to you exactly the flower I saw. Metaphors leave much for the imagination. I could compare the flower’s color to the sea. Or the sky. But that tells you little. The color of the sea or the sky varies.

I am no poet. But I can describe the flower. If you give me time I can describe it more exactly than a poet could. But still you cannot see the beauty. When you read poetry you tell me you see through the poet’s eyes. Or you feel what the poet feels. And yet when I tell you in plain words of the flower you seem unmoved.

Perhaps I will never understand poetry. Perhaps my words can never conjure beautiful images in another’s mind. But I can appreciate beauty. And I know precisely what it looks like.