As Blue Fades
Which defines you best, a creaking lid or the light-turned flower?
The coffee’s steam or smoke wafting from your hand.
Your bowls color my shelves; I touch them daily.
Sound fills their bodies with memory.
The lighter’s click invokes your name.
And the stepping stones to nowhere, your current address.
If the moon could breathe would its breath flavor our nights?
I picture a separate one above your clouded island.
The dissipating blue in filtered light.
Above the coral. Above the waves and ocean floor far below.
Above the space your ashes should share.
Where the boats rise and fall, like chests, like the waning years.
Like a tide carrying me towards yesterday’s reef.
Or the black-tailed gull spinning in the updraft.
“As Blue Fades” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
Sad, yet beautiful – especially like stepping stones to nowhere and above the space your ashes should share. This brings my mother’s essence forward almost within “touch” – perhaps I’ll go retrieve from the cabinet her wooden bowl for chopping pecans – hmmm, maybe I’ll even chop pecans in her memory.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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Thanks, Jazz. Stephanie used my mom’s large mixing bowl to make the stuffing today. A memorable and meaningful occasion. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Happy Thanksgiving 2019… I am VERY thankful you persist in the belief that you should be one of the ones to put words into poetic order. The belief is justified, borne out by objective proof that you are the Okaji the prophets spoke of, the One who would bring curves to the world of lines! 🙂
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Thank you, Daniel. It has been a very special Thanksgiving! I am grateful for so much!
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Thanks to technology (blogging) I get to read your poetry every day. Now that’s something to be very thankful/grateful for!
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You’ve made my week, Daniel. Thank you.
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