On Blueness

which is neither misery
nor melancholy per se,
but the way anything buried
aspires. How blackness becomes
a bladed pendulum swaying between
am I not a man & a brother
& meat. How it dips
into the position
of the unthought,
then out. Trust me.
Foucault isn’t
helpful here. I am after
what comes when the law leaves
a dream gutted. The space
between a plea & please.
A mother marching in the name
of another woman’s dead children.
Not the anguish she carries alongside
her as if it were a whole, separate person,
but the very fact of her feet
addressing the pavement,
the oatmeal she warmed in the microwave
that morning, sugar & milk
& blueberries blending in a white bowl
as she reads the paper, taken aback
only by the number of bullets
they poured like a sermon into him.
How despair kills: too slow to cut
the music from a horn, or set
my nephew’s laughter to dim.
I am dying, yes, but I am not the marrow
in a beloved’s memory just yet.
Who can be alive today
& not study grief?
There are bodies everywhere,
but also that flock of cardinals
making the sky look patriotic.