“Am I Blue”

The blue you pick.
The blue you leave behind.

Forget-me-nots and chicory.

Ripe blueberries nestled in hand.
Michigan sky after a snowstorm.

Blue as home
at least
for a season.

The waters of Lamu or
New Zealand's glacial gleam.

Humming night's bluest hymn.

A blue that almost killed
me but saved me
after all.

Am I sad was asked –
answered I am blue.

*

The last mosquitoes worry in my ear through another moon meditation. I lost my religion to moonlight during the choicelss choice to embrace living. Now I am watching time run out of hands and faces. I have learned to mother the mother and become a grandmother to myself. Red hair doesn't really gray but it does stiffen and eventually lean towards white. The aging body doesn't concern me but the suffering which comes along for the ride can sometimes refuse its destiny of impermanence.

Curled leaves skitter to rest on the pebbled walkway to my front door. The weather report reads like a poem:

fall takes a break
summer-like weather
ushering October

The fields begin to empty into the vast autumn sea and chrysanthemums are all the rage. Geese overhead point towards sanctuary for coming storms, and apples soften and brown before I can eat them all.

Soon enough the glow of nighttime snow will blanket me in the for the winter and I will long towards remembrance of my “slash of blue.”