POETRY ON MEDIUM

Blue

The essence of blue

Blue is Picasso’s Old Guitarist, hunched and contorted, strumming meaninglessness.

The blue sky presses its image on a clear lake, God’s wax seal stamped on Nature. Only the mindful, the initiated can read the secrets.

A mother bakes blueberries and crust in a pie tin, blue smeared on the grins and memories of her children.

A guitarist loiters on street corners in the deep South. The blues ache and weep with the sorrow of lynching trees, segregated water fountains, and cotton fields, but the music is tough as calluses, demanding to be human.

Blue is the memory of my mother watching me in the backyard from the kitchen window, fragments of the sky glistening in her eyes.

Blue taints my mental illness, suffocates me with stained glass martyrs bleeding azure in empty cathedrals.

I am confined to the blue loveseat in the blue-walled study, waiting for resurrection, waiting for blue morning glory in the garden to open and embrace a new sky, a new day.