Azul

[to Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958)]

Juan Ramon standing amid blue flowers

did not hear me calling

small birds flew on every side

through chinks in a chain-link cloud and over

the scuttled rainbows of your sighs I picked up on the ground

to far-away laughter

oh but "not-it" I cried out from

the space left by your shadow

on the grass

like a child in a game of tag,

the last one left in the

blonde and feathered fields still

unashamed

of starlight by the railroad tracks

and hotel rolls with real pats of butter-

at home in the pink stucco of "play-like" afternoons...

Sr. Jiminez bluer than the bluest

shadows could be,

could it be the earth is disenchanted?

will we grow apart?

stand still, I said, with a mouthful of pins

I will sew your shadow to the sky

and line it with pale green stars

it's strange while

I'm still trying to speak

in lilies and small roses

in blue diamonds secretly

distinctly...

oh why do you keep on

haunting your own poems

it hurts so much

even in my minted sleep or

is it, dream?

to be crumpling up the violet

of mimeographed vocabulary lists

again-

and practicing

balletic leaps by the

persimmon trees

it's not that I'm that far

from all those merry dialogues

about butter about arroz con

pollo about beaten chocolate-

regarding time I find it hard to keep

the tenses straight:

do I keep breaking the heart of moonlight

without knowing why-

or is all that hushed?

and can I pray to God in

pure hibiscus, too?

entenderás...

a hundred years from home

no one recognized my speech

but the blue wind and God

and the tire-swing swung

in glittering silence by the

small girl dressed in

blue porous happiness...

mary angela douglas april 26-april 28, 2011