Tuesday, April 3, 2012

blue & blue, borax & sugar, holes & roses

prussian blue toenails=ready for spring break

blue can be blue
or blue can be bright
or sky or lake or sea or eye or
lupine or vein or lace or dead or
sadhappy, the color of the arterial 
roadway to our heart
& so it is my color for the season
for the series of juxtapositions 
we live whether or not
we believe in it
all is soft


*

tights giveaway winners, selected by one of our illustrious guest bloggers, are:

-christine-chioma--blue roses

&
-sunshine christiensen--holey black

one of you will receive a punkish pair of holey black tights, the other a fine meshed blue rose garden for your legs.
maybe some day you'll want to get together and trade.
mixing the hard and the soft is always good, even if you don't believe in the hard and the soft,
but rather think that 
all is soft. 
 
*

from the poetry foundation website:


Common Blue
 by Melissa Kwasny
 
Their eggs are laid on lupine. Tiny jade
hairstreaks I could easily mistake for dew.
Too precious. Too incidental,
and besides that, blue, these trills that flounce
in my potato patch, drawn
from dryland origins to the domestic
stain of water from my hose.
What an old woman would study, I think
as you hand me the guidebook, distracted
by the replica of a parasol
growing out of a bleached cow pie.
The Siamese kitten with his butterfly eyes
comes running, his mouth full
of swallowtail, his breath smelling of borax
and sugar I have poured
over the ant hills in the garden.
He is young and intent on eating poison.
We bushwhack through Paradise,
what is there to say except to lament
the daily evidence of its passing.
How the common blues scatter from my shade.
And you, so fragile, so sick, so thin,
your diet restricted, keep pointing out
the bearded face of larkspur.
When the angels fell, a fifteenth-centruy bishop says,
there were 133, 306, 668 of them.
It takes us all afternoon to cross the field.
The body, it is so sad what happens to it.
If you fell, you would dry up instantly.
But these are not angel wings
who disguise themselves as leaf or shred of bark,
who are named after the stops
in meaning our language must make room for:
the comma whose wings look battered,
or the violet underside of the question mark.
To keep the mind from clenching, you say,
is the main thing. Even the most
beautiful days always seem to have death in them.
As Valentinus said; our fall into love and sleep.
You especially like the dark alpines
with their furred bodies and lack of marking.
And the sulphurs, yellowed scraps that fall
from a myth of origin that doesn’t include us.
When we find them, we will wonder
who is still alive. We speak of our souls with such
surface ease. But who will take such care for us?
You bend and bend to the scrappy blue sea,
your back turned to the moon fluttering above you.
I have been thinking so much of strength
this week, yours and mine, I mean,
the field of attention that can be strengthened.
*
legwear: bare
inspiration:  janet mcadam's daily poetry prompt "the art of losing" at book balloon
looking forward:  to greeting the saguaro cacti waving to us along the road on our way to az.

9 comments:

  1. I love that poem. Thanks for sharing it.

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    1. so glad you loved it. hope you'll do daily poetry in april my dear. and congrats on the tights. you'll look fantastic in them.

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  2. Who's toes are those? Def not Candland toes! I love the blue nail polish, will it be up for the next giveaway or do you only do tights? If you live in Az you can only wear tights 2 weeks out of the year....as my 3 year old loves to say, "it's not fair"!

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    1. yep, they're candland toes. how could you not recognize?

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  3. I love Prussian Blue. Time for a change. I got a facial instead of a pedicure this weekend. I was so tired after that I took a long nap. And then went to bed. Your toes are beautiful. Are you following CJane at all? Commenting on blogs about other blogs. Totally meta. Love love love!

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    Replies
    1. i haven't read cjane recently--is there something of particular interest? i did just check out her recent posts since you mentioned her blog, and discovered that she had all the donuts from provo bakery on conference saturday. leaving me with the four gross cake donuts.

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  4. I read this post while I was sitting with a handful of freshwomen on my hall. I made everyone stop talking so I could read aloud to them.

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