INDIGO

                    for ES 

So: 

this evening

the sky is not ours,

walking barefoot

on the verandah,

it's not violet or

blue or even

ultramarine, it's

just the sky,

a fact, nominal,

as they say, just

the sky. There's

nothing here except

precious words

you’ve been singing

all your life, not

to anyone particular,

just a longing

for a certain order--not

that this is actually

knowable--thought,

after all, is a recital,

a flirtation, a performance,

a sense that the 

very sounds

are ineffable, like

the heart, unknowable 

among so many 

moods. And so

it's come to this:

an accident: `say

you witness the sun

setting in the deep

blue--the color

the sky translates

to mind of what was

once felt and now,

what? felt again?

an ache to forgive? 

a desire? No. It's 

the feeling of words 

spilt long ago, 

and the jealous itch 

to be other than 

one’s self, to love 

what one cannot love

even as a child

in that evening

now so long ago,

knowing now,

fact, there's no order

after all, that the mind

commands but

the world cannot

yield beyond,

say, this mud iris,

that violin, that

Packard parked

in a ditch, nominal

facts, separate, say,

from the drunken

wasps drinking

applemash, the

lightning bugs

floating in the

dusk, the lurid

opossum lurking

in the kudzu.

In the end it’s

only love and fear

we meet when we 

open the door

and the world

won’t stand for us,

or our beautiful words, 

regardless of the 

order, it’s the

world that lives

on, outside of us,

that’s the terror

of indigo and all

the loneliness

that follows.