The poet used the word “incarnadine,”
a word pronounced dine or dean,
a word I don’t think I had ever seen,
so I looked it up in the dictionary
to learn it is the color of a cherry —
I said that, not the dictionary.
It said crimson red, the
scholastic color of my seminary —
a color I wore at graduation
when I walked the chancel
by all to be seen
in my doctoral hood
of incarnadine;
that’s dine or dean;
either way it’s a fine
color in which to be seen
even while out and about to dine.