They asked, "How could you possibly know what red is?" 

I tell them "I don't. But I know a robin doesn't know how to be anything else."

A little scrap of fire against a nothing sky,

The dance on a mound of nothing soil, 

For no other reason but being alive one second longer.

How can that bright spark of a song, 

Somewhere between laughter and a whistle,

Given to the morning with that audacious charm

Be anything but red?