“Fire fire! Where where? Here here.”
Blue: three down-curved
dark blue yellow-throated
sepals and three upright
narrower blue petals, swamp flag,
flame shape from the grave
beside the river. Listen:
indigo bunting, blue
with black wings soon to carry him
all night on the gulf wind to the island.
“Fire fire!” he keeps singing, song
learned in another world: “Where where?”
And if he cannot see the stars he sickens.
Depth of a bell rung after sunset.
Blue, in the eye where joy veers
into sadness, veers, and deepens.
Red tide in the surf at midnight,
blue with luminescence, ocean
turning over in the mind a question.
And in the master’s palm the yellow
of an egg, still perfect, to be spilled
into the powder of crushed lapis
put to heaven with small brushstrokes:
blue, beyond the schizophreniform
wild hairdo of the Baptist. Where?
Where in death is the soul? Dawn,
where the Seven Sisters swim
and vanish. Hind wing of a swallowtail.
Subterranean blue crystal tears of copper.
Here, among small yellow blossoms
in the sour grass, blue flutes of gentian.
Where is the music lips formed
out of nothing? Planet earth,
blue-green as an opal. Here. Here
at my feet at the path’s edge, berries
of a bluebeard lily, blue as sapphires,
blue with frost and poison.
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