Kind of Blue

1.

The promise of creativity

flows like rain pebbling

the roof of the study

where your untidy poems lay.

A glance backward

sweeps the world:

as rotund as an orange,

as blue as the books

we pack in refrigerated boxes.

A deep cyan, dark as night,

settles over the city. Indigo

streets, limned avenues.

Dreams encased in dreams.

2.

Waters wash over me, a placid

azure stitched with strands

of maroon and gray. I marvel

at them in autumn on the streets

of Scotland, blood-red moon

ascending over Edinburgh’s castle.

Black, black sky, the fingerprints

of God pressed onto burnt-out suns.

Novas, nuevas, née mort.

I would tally the containers,

but the abacus is broken.

All numbers equal nine.

Aquamarine brings green

to bear on the equation.

3.

Salt seeps through the hollows

of walls, the room interrogates

itself in pools of seaweed, soft-

shelled crabs, angular gulls. You

know the ocean’s rhyme, but

the meter is skewed, the skewer

heavy with charbroiled fish.

No plates, forks. Sea reflects sky

reflects sea reflects a kind of blue,

exonerates my mood. Trumpet trills

shrink the shallow hue of veins.

Blood pumps blue pumps red pumps

life on the cathedral steps. O-negative

breaks positive. I will sweep up the pieces,

paint them steely blue.